


Betting on a Dark Horse

by drakensis



Category: Exalted
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-02
Updated: 2013-12-03
Packaged: 2018-01-03 06:13:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 19
Words: 49,934
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1067042
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drakensis/pseuds/drakensis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When a demon tries to kill a Dynast on a dark street, the politics could turn out to be more deadly than the demon.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Nyaya

Rain made mud of the layer of dirt and animal dung that covered the streets of Salt-Founded Glory. Even in daylight the addition of blood would hardly have been noticeable.

 

At night it was almost impossible to see, and of concern only to those whose blood had been spilt.

 

Nyaya knew from the sticky feeling of her shirt against the boiled leather strips of her armour that some of hers had been added to it, but her hand still closed around the curved handle of her spread-the-water knife and through the water clogging her ears she could hear the screaming of the man she was trying to protect; so she levered herself up right, using the long crescent blade of the weapon as a crutch when her bum knee protested the effort.

 

A traditional spread-the-water knife would probably have snapped under the weight, but Nyaya's was clumsy and thick-bladed - apprentice work too heavy for use by one of the Prince's men but sufficient for someone more used to shorter blades that chopped more than cut.

 

Two wipes of her sleeve cleared enough water and perhaps blood too from Nyaya's eyes that she could see and she threw herself into a stumbling charge towards the horse-sized spider that had its mandibles around the man's lower thigh.

 

With a surge of effort, she brought her knife down upon a joint in one leg, smashing it to ruin.

 

The spider let loose an unearthly howl and skittered back from its prey to face Nyaya. Much of the leg it had been gnawing upon came away as it released its hold.

 

"Now we're both limping," Nyaya spat.

 

The spider spat a gobbet of bloody flesh into the mud. Something glittered briefly in the moonlight. "I've seven strong legs," it replied. "How many do you have left?"

 

Nyaya chuckled morbidly. Mother wouldn't be happy if she came in looking like this anyway, covered in mud and blood. "You suck at counting," she announced.

 

"What?"

 

The woman lurched forwards, the jagged tips of her spread-the-water knife reaching to snare another knee.

 

Except the leg wasn't there. It snapped out and crashed against her own with crushing force that spun her back down into the mud.

 

Damn shame really. At least she should have been able to make good on the witty banter that she had had in mind.

 

Well fine, she wasn't a hero from a puppet-show. At least she could die with dignity.

 

A scream tore from her throat as the leg - or one of the six others - pinned her against the ground.

 

So much for dignity.

 

"Stay right there while I finish up," the spider hissed. "And if you're lucky I'll dine on your head before your other limbs." It walked away, each foot step splashing in the mud.

 

Nyaya wanted to protest, wanted to push herself up, but all of that would require breath and she was a little short of it right now. And she'd lost hold of her spread-the-water knife too. Constable Kanuna would throw a fit if she lost the weapon she'd drawn from the militia station's small armoury.

 

She was about to try anyway when a child-like voice spoke up. The words were incomprehensible to Nyaya but they sounded familiar, not entirely unlike the time she'd overheard visitors from the Realm speak to each other in the tongue of the Blessed Isle.

 

There was a sizzling noise and the spider's steps ceased.

 

Then there was a squelch of sandals and strong hands grabbed Nyaya's shoulder and hip, flipping her over onto her back. The face looking down at her was positively demonic, a pattern of black and blood-red in jagged lines that gave it the image of a cracked skull that had been painted in fresh blood.

 

The water that ran down it added to the latter impression, as did the black robes that for a moment gave her the impression that the face was simply hanging over her without an attached body.

 

But at least it wasn't a spider.

 

"Are you bleeding out particularly?" the child-like voice asked in flametongue.

 

Nyaya gaped at the figure, at a loss for words when she realised the voice was coming from the face.

 

Patiently, the... man? child? repeated the question or something close to it in wavetongue.

 

"I... I... don't think so," she stammered in flametongue, not trusting her rudimentary wavetongue - learned as it was on the docks of a half-dozen ports. "The spider?"

 

The head nodded. "Gone. I’d help you up but I think there's someone else needing me more urgently." Then he vanished.

 

It took two dozen heart-beats for Nyaya to lever herself upright and spot the small, black-robed figure knelt over the wounded man. She did so just in time to see the victim jerk awake with a scream of agony.

 

"What are you doing?" With fumbling fingers, Nyaya fumbled for her sporran and was pleased to find the pouch still hanging from the front of her belt. That meant there might be a chance she still had her whistle.

 

The little figure didn't look up. "Cauterising, before he bleeds to death." He - Nyaya thought, somehow, that it was a male voice - reached out with one long-fingered hand and pressed sharply against his... victim's? patient's? throat. The man clawed at the hand briefly and then slumped back onto the street.

 

Nyaya's fingers closed around the whistle. "You're a physician?"

 

"A surgeon."

 

She smelt the acrid scent of hot metal and then old memories spun up in her mind as that of scorched and burned flesh reached her nose. Darkness threatened to swallow her and convulsively Nyaya brought the whistle to her lips and blew.

 

The shrill whistle echoed across the night streets.

 

Nyaya blew again before slumping back into the dirt of the muddy street.

 

E-X-A-L-T-E-D

 

Waking in a gutter wasn't something that Nyaya was totally unfamiliar with, although she'd been younger - by a year or two - the last time it had happened.

 

Waking with Constable Kanuna looking down his long nose at her was rather more unusual - the waking part, not the nose-looking-down.

 

"Do you recall the penalties for a member of the militia who sleeps on duty?" the Constable asked conversationally.

 

"Six lashes," Nyaya mumbled. And another four if it was due to drunkenness, she almost added before shaking off sleepy resignation at the recollection that she wasn't sleeping off a jar of something purporting to be brandy this time. "I wasn't asleep."

 

Kanuna raised his eyebrows. "You were snoring," he informed her, before shaking his head. "I suppose falling asleep right next to a wounded dynast would surpass all your previous misdemeanours, or very nearly."

 

"D-dynast?" A cold chill, worse than rain water, ran down her spine. There was no greater power in all Creation than the gathered might of the Scarlet Dynasty and Prince Laxhander was never shy to pander to them. If one of them was involved...

 

"Oh yes." Kanuna smiled coldly. "Mnemon Dhana was attacked on the streets of our city. Not one of the Exalted but close kin to several and friend of many others. This is going to get political. A good chance to make one's name or to tar it... tar it further in your case. At least you didn't misplace your issue weapon again."

 

Nyaya blinked and then closed her fingers around the grip of the spread-the-water knife. How had that come back to her hand? She was sure she recalled losing it.

 

Rolling over she scrambled stiffly to her feet. The sun must be somewhere above the horizon, although with the heavy clouds it was hard to tell. "What happened?"

 

"No, militiawoman. That's what you tell me. Now report."

 

Nyaya sighed and looked around, reorienting herself. "I was making my patrol along the Soaper's Street when I heard a commotion from this direction. When I got here there was a giant spider chasing after a man - Mnemon Dhana, I suppose."

 

"A wolf-spider inside the city?" asked Kanuna skeptically.

 

"No, bigger. It was bigger than I am." She shook her head. "I got smacked around like a rag doll when I tried to stop it. I didn't even get one lucky hit in until after it had him on the ground."

 

"I see." The Constable's tone of voice suggested that he didn't. "And where is this 'giant spider' now?"

 

Nyaya shrugged helplessly. "I don't know. It kicked me into the gutter and went back towards its victim. I guess the surgeon must have seen something."

 

She could practically see Kanuna's ears prick up. "What surgeon?"

 

"He said he was a surgeon. Last thing I remember before I passed out was him saying he'd cauterized... no that he was cauterizing the wounds to Mnemon Dhana's leg."

 

"There was no one here when we found you," growled Kanuna. "What did this mysterious surgeon look like?"

 

"Very small, with a red and black face..." Nyaya admitted, realising how ridiculous that sounded.

 

To her surprise however, Kanuna didn't accuse her of imagining it. Instead, his response was to utter a string of curses that she'd more have expected from someone on the docks rather than from her superior.

 

"You know him?" she asked when the man ran down.

 

"I almost nailed the little freak for illegal thaumaturgy last year," the Constable grumbled. "He calls himself Ghora but he's a foreigner, came down from the High Lands last year - probably one step ahead of the law - and set up camp down near the canal docks. So far as I know, he's still there."

 

"So he's not a surgeon?"

 

"I suppose he is that. The two aren't mutually exclusive."

 

Nyaya nodded. Most tradespeople knew some a few rituals that a very strict view counted as thaumaturgy, but to practical purposes were simply part of their profession. She knew a couple herself, one she'd learned at her mother's knee and another she'd picked up from a grizzled mercenary on the caravan road to Gem. But illegal thaumaturgy, while it could cover a multitude of sins, almost always meant something more sinister than keeping your sword rust-free or cloth from rotting.

 

"Go and find him." Kanuna wrinkled his nose. "And then get yourself cleaned up. Judge Jaja wants to be briefed on this at mid-day and I want both of you there as witnesses in case the Judge has questions."

 

"Sir, my militia service is only to an hour after dawn. I've got work waiting for me at home." Granted, apprentice scut-work cleaning up the workshops used by her cousins, but if she missed it then there'd be hell to pay. It would be pain enough after getting the stuffing beaten out of her.

 

"Well that's up to you," Kanuna said indifferently. "You can attend to make your report as one of the militia or to give testimony as a witness-under-guard."

 

I hope the Pale Mistress pays a visit on you, Kanuna. "Fine. Sir. I'll find him."

 

"I thought that you would."

 

Nyaya waited until the Constable's back was turned before spitting on the ground. A flicker of memory crossed her mind, the spider spitting chunks of meat from Mnemon Dhana's leg across the street and she shuddered, empty stomach churning.

 

E-X-A-L-T-E-D

 

Salt-Founded Glory was, for the most part, built on top of Salt-Founded Glory. Legend had it that there had been a city here since before the fall of the Anathema beneath the blades of the Dragonblooded. The Shore Princes ruled from the city when they weren't attending upon the Realm's Satrap in An Teng's capital city and generation after generation of nobility and mercantile gentry had built and rebuilt their townhouses and palaces here.

 

Nyaya's first destination after leaving the scene of the crime wasn't the canal port that served as the hub of trade with the rest of An Teng. Instead, she made for a once proud district that had been left behind by fashion and the elite that once dwelled there. Some of the buildings had been torn down, but others survived and one of them - once bath-house for some long-vanished noble clan - now provided the service to anyone willing to pay the coin.

 

This early she knew there wasn't much of a crowd and sure enough, there was only one other person waiting to check in their clothes and personal items. The Old Bathhouse wasn't the cleanest or the cheapest place she could have come, but the proprietor was a fanatic for making sure that no one stole from his customers.

 

It had cost Abunai the Elder a year's profit to hire the Prince's sorcerer Lalaca to send a demon after the one thief who'd successfully flouted that decree but he'd boasted it about it for the rest of his life and made the money back in six months. His nephew, Abunai the Younger had removed the gnawed bones of that thief from the shelf over the counter when he took over, not out of any scruples but, in his own words: "to make room for the bones of anyone who thinks I have less stomach than my illustrious uncle."

 

There hadn't been a second theft.

 

Nyaya stripped down in the lobby, piling her armour and knife on top of the clothes, then handed a second yen to the young clerk. "Have them cleaned quickly for me, I haven't more than an hour." Then she crossed to the baths, cursing Kanuna under her breath. Not only was she being kept from her family obligations but two yen was more than she really wanted to spend.

 

There was no alternative though - she'd be fined as much if she returned the armour and knife to the armoury in this state and the Constable would probably do exactly the same if she arrived in front of the Judge looking as if she'd crawled out of the gutter, even if her report made it clear that that was exactly what had happened.

 

With a sigh she took a bar of soap and started lathering up.

 

When she walked out into the lobby, scrubbed to the point that she felt - and smelt - more or less human again, the clerk was standing with his back pressed against the wall and Abunai the Younger was glaring at him from the counter. The young man squeaked nervously when he spotted her and Abunai turned his head with snake-like smoothness.

 

"Is there a problem?" Nyaya asked, her momentary relief disintegrating. Obviously there was.

 

"A small one," confirmed Abunai. "There has been a small... accident with your clothes. Nothing beyond the abilities of my laundry workers but it will take a little longer for them to be cleaned."

 

Oh of course. What now? Pine sap rubbed into them? Scorching with a candle?

 

Nyaya wanted to grab the clerk by his tunic and demand to know why, but again, she knew the answer.

 

She'd left An Teng without her mother's permission - run away, to all purposes. She was a scandal, an embarrassment to the respected matriarch of a successful craftsman's family. She was, when you come down to it, as much of an easy target as the families that worked the canal boats. Tengese... but not quite Tengese. She had little recourse for it was unlikely that Nyaya's mother would take her part.

 

So there was opportunity. Throw in that she was, as a member of the militia, assumed to share sympathies with Prince Laxhander and by extension with the Realm, whose satrap demanded more silver, more rice, and more opium every year and yet who was less and less able or willing to call on the Imperial Legions to provide the security that was in theory the trade-off... there was motivation too.

 

"This reflects less than well upon your establishment's high reputation," she said in a neutral voice.

 

Abunai nodded his head solemnly. "My illustrious uncle is no doubt looking down upon me with expectations that I shall make this right."

 

The clerk's eyes flicked nervously to the shelf above the counter.

 

The owner of the bathhouse let the moment drag on cruelly and then spread his hands. "You will of course receive a full refund of the... three yen that you have paid."

 

"Two yen."

 

Abunai nodded, holding out three of the green copper coins. "As I said, three yen. I will have your clothes delivered to your home as soon as they are cleaned, your armour and weapon fortunately suffered no such mischance."

 

One yen profit from the encounter wasn't exactly the outcome Nyaya was looking for. She certainly couldn't replace her shirt or her kilt in a hurry on the strength of it. Decent as Abunai was being - driven, no doubt, but concern for the reputation of his business for security, it wasn't going to get her out of trouble. Perhaps that was the angle to exploit.

 

"Unfortunately, I will be meeting with Judge Jaja at mid-day," Nyaya explained. "I really can't turn up like this." She gestured down her nude body, bruises purpling her skin, belly sticking out and the tracery of old scars marking her past. "He's a delicate flower of the nobility and I doubt he's been exposed to such before."

 

Abunai glowered at her for a moment. The implication of dropping the name of his bathhouse to the Judge in a negative sense was more or less an empty one but it wasn't a bluff that the man could afford to call. "I am sure we can lend you something suitable to the occasion," he agreed and bowed slightly.

 

Nyaya returned the bow and caught the murmured "And don't come back." as she straightened.

 

E-X-A-L-T-E-D

 

Clad in a rather nice, if ill-fitting, shirt and kilt under her armour, Nyaya reached the canal port in time for the Sun to finally conquer the clouds and shine down upon An Teng. Like about half of the people on the streets, she paused to murmur a quick devotion to the Golden Lord at her first sighting of the sun that day.

 

In most towns of An Teng the momentary prayer would have been almost universal, but here in Salt-Founded Glory there were quite a number of adherents of the Immaculate doctrine that considered mortal prayer save under their direction to be an affront.

 

Away from her homeland, Nyaya had fallen into the habit - standing out more than she already did was unwise. And this sort of comfortable custom was what she'd come home to enjoy.

 

Wasn't it?

 

The moment passed and she reached the waterfront without further incident. The quays were busy, as usual, with labourers carrying sacks of rice, loose-slatted crates of live poultry and jars that probably came from every brewery north of the River of Queens.

 

What wasn't in evidence was a surgeon. Well, it wasn't as if it was likely that he'd be running around on the working docks themselves. The smart thing was to ask someone who knew the area.

 

Approaching one of the overseers (whose main job was to keep pilfering by the labourers at an acceptable level) she asked politely: "Please could you direct me to the surgeon Ghora."

 

The woman looked her over thoughtfully and then shrugged. "I don’t know of him. Have you tried asking a boat crew? They use all the quays, I only know this one."

 

"Thank you." Nyaya bowed and moved over towards a boat that was almost unloaded. "Excuse me, I have a question."

 

The man perched on the aft deck stitching up a tear in a sail looked up. "Yeah?"

 

"Do you know of a surgeon called Ghora?"

 

He pursed his lips. "Can't say I know the name. Have you asked any of the dockworkers? I just got here."

 

Nyaya bit back her initial response. "Thanks. I'll try that."

 

"Can't help you. Try asking a boat crew."

 

"Haven't heard of him. Have you asked anyone on the docks?"

 

"Ghora? Doesn't ring a bell. You should try asking one of the boat crews."

 

"Don't know any surgeons in Salt-Founded Glory. I'd have ask a dockworker."

 

After the fifth repetition, Nyaya had got the idea. The responses were too obviously mirrored to be anything but a run-around.

 

Wonderful, just wonderful. "If I'm going to get this everywhere..." she began and then shook her head. No. She had a job to do and if she didn't like it... well, she'd done a fair number of things she didn't like over the years, when she was called on to do them.

 

Which still left the problem of how to find Ghora. For whatever reason, the dock workers and boatmen were all blacking her and she didn't think it was greed that motivated them. What did that leave?

 

Fear was possible. A man gifted in thaumaturgy, one who had been accused of using it illegally could well be capable of intimidating even usually redoubtable boatmen and dockers.

 

Another possibility was fondness. The families that operated the canal boats could wind up anywhere in An Teng, which cut them off from the more stable family structures of the nation. They were clannish and might well rally around in a conspiracy of silence if someone they considered to be theirs was threatened.

 

But that wouldn't explain the dockers - their families were local and established. Confrontations between the two groups hadn't been uncommon in the past.

 

Nyaya looked along the docks. She'd only been down here once since her return to Salt-Founded Glory and that once had been on her arrival. Thinking back to her younger days though... yes, it was different. No less busy but there was an air of restraint to the interactions between dockers and boatmen that hadn't been there before.

 

It might be nothing to do with Ghora, she reminded herself. But if he's working here then there has to be some way for patients to find him...

 

Well that's a thought.

 

She squinted up at the sun. Was she really that desperate? It was perhaps halfway to noon.

 

Looking at the boats, Nyaya considered just walking up to one of those ready to depart and asking if she could work passage down to Dragon's Jaw. She'd not be obviously out of place in that den of pirates... but of course, it was a den of pirates. Don't be a fool, Nyaya, she reminded herself. You came home to get away from places like that.

 

Which meant...

 

Yes, she was that desperate.

 

A few minutes later Nyaya walked up to one of the quays and cornered the supervisor between herself and the water. "I appear to have injured myself," she explained, indicating her dislocated arm with her good hand. "Could you direct me to a reputable surgeon?"


	2. Ghora

The sackcloth that hung across the doorway into Ghora's little shack was thin enough that he could see someone was standing outside. From the shape, probably a woman. From the angle of the head, most likely looking at the sign next to the doorway, so most likely literate.

 

That wasn't unheard of among his clientele, but it wasn't common either. The reason for the sign was that enough people who could read it would gossip and word had spread.

 

I dismember the living

that they may not die

 

It was ghoulish, but it hadn't cut into his business. Along the docks there was a certain appreciation for someone who called a spade a spade. There were several dozen cripples doing light work on the docks who'd have been dead of infections without quick, clean and efficient amputations of their limbs.

 

Most expected his home to be stuffed full of herbs and elaborate medical equipment. He had no patience with such foolishness. He wasn't a physician who could treat sickness. There was a scrubbed table large enough to lay someone on and low enough for him to be comfortable working on whoever lay on it.

 

He slept on that table, which was what he'd been doing until he heard feet on the wooden planks outside.

 

The curtain drew back and the woman walked in. Given she was fat, limping and had a dislocated left shoulder, somehow Ghora didn't think she was here for his entertainment. He hoped not - she was easily twice his size and probably three times his weight.

 

"Ghora?" she asked, looking around the shadowy shack, eyes evidently not adjusted to the darkness. "Are you in here?"

 

"What if I said... no?" he asked, standing on the table so his face was at least level with her neck. "Hmm. Didn't I save you from that Anuhle last night?"

 

"If an Anule is a spider then yes."

 

"Anuhle, yes. It's a highly technical term used to describe any of the spider-shaped breeds of demon. And now you've dislocated your arm? Careless."

 

She seemed shocked. "That was a demon?"

 

"Oh yes. Not a terribly powerful one, I will admit." Ghora eyed her arm. "That'll have to come off, you know."

 

"What!?" she exclaimed and then glowered. "Oh very funny. I have had a dislocated arm before."

 

"And if I cut it off, you'll never dislocate it again."

 

"No thank you." She turned and slammed her shoulder against the side of the door frame. Other than shaking the flimsy front wall and causing herself a fair bit of pain it didn't accomplish a great deal.

 

Ghora eyed the wall warily. It was only a thin layer of wood held in place by nails at each end and by the doorframe. "Please don't do that again. If you don't want me to deal with it, why are you here vandalising my home?"

 

"It's about last night. If that was a real demon, why didn't kill us all?"

 

The surgeon drew himself up to his admittedly not very impressive height of four feet. "Because I banished it."

 

She blinked. "You banished it?"

 

Alright, that was just rude. "I saved your ungrateful life in the process, I might add. I don't think it's much to ask that you refrain from smashing my home apart. No don't do that," he added quickly as she looked about to bash her shoulder against the frame again. "You'll bring the roof down on both of us. Come over here. I'll take care of it."

 

She stopped short of following through and shrugged. "I probably can't afford you."

 

"My usual price is a siu, but since it’s just a dislocated shoulder I’ll call it a yen and you not smashing my home up."

 

To his relief she nodded and came over to the table so that he could reach. "Your name's Ghora, right?" she asked as she fished the requested coin out.

 

"Yep." He fingered her shoulder. Hmm. Self-inflicted?

 

"I'm Nyaya."

 

"That's nice for you. Why'd you dislocate your own shoulder?"

 

She winced as he poked at the shoulder. "I needed a convincing reason to be looking for you or no one would tell me how to find you."

 

"Well next time fake something. You've not done this any good, it's going to be carrying the bruises for a week or two. Why was it so important for you to find me? We've already established that it's not gratitude."

 

"Look, I'm sorry but everything I've ever heard about demons says that the only ones that can defeat a demon are Exalted, or Gods or at least a good-sized number of Immaculate monks. Not a..."

 

"And how do you know I'm neither Exalted nor a God? I'll grant you that I'm obviously not a monk." He grasped the shoulder and upper arm with his long-fingered hands.

 

"What would one of the Exalted be doing running a back-alley surgery on the - GAAAAAAH!" she shrieked as he popped the shoulder in. "I thought you were going to fix it, not rip it off."

 

"Don't be such a baby."

 

"It hurt less when I dislocated it! I almost bit my tongue!"

 

Ghora smirked. "So now that your shoulder's alright, can you get lost and leave me to sleep? Banishing demons takes it out of me."

 

"So how could you do that?" asked Nyaya persistently. "It didn't even seem to be a struggle for you: one moment it was there and the next, poof!"

 

"Like I said, I banished it. Just be grateful you're alive."

 

"I'm not the only one who wants to know. Constable Kanuna -"

 

"Hah." Kanuna would love to get some claws into him for something.

 

"- he's investigating the attack because the man who lost a leg is a dynast."

 

If it had been possible for Ghora to pale - and between the tattoos across his face and the pallor that was his natural skin tone it barely was - then he was fairly sure that he would have. Kanuna was inconsequential but if one of the Great Houses was involved then there were much higher stakes to worry about. "You have my attention," he admitted reluctantly.

 

Nyaya didn't seem too smug about that, which was lucky for her or he'd have been tempted to dislocate her shoulder again. "He's going to brief Judge Jaja about what happened and he wants us both there as witnesses."

 

He rolled his eyes. "If Kanuna wants to see me this much, he could at least invite me to a party."

 

E-X-A-L-T-E-D

 

The city Judge had an office at the militia armoury but he never used it. Instead he handled professional duties out of a wing of his family mansion, the same rooms that his father had used to manage the family fortunes. Currently those responsibilities had been handed off to his uncles and they were running the business from estates, leaving plenty of room for the heir to dabble in political efforts.

 

The room that was used for reports was a small space on the ground floor. Jaja preferred an intimate setting when meeting subordinates. Not that there was much chance of the militia filling a large room unless a full muster of all the part-time members was called.

 

Nyaya stood at attention facing the desk while Kanuna laid out the facts for their superior. Ghora, not being subject to militia discipline had been offered a stool, which he perched cross-legged upon.

 

"Militiawoman Nyaya should have signalled for help immediately, of course," Kanuna concluded, "But given her inexperience and the violence of the situation, I'm not sure it would be wise to reprimand her. She was, after all, trying to rescue a distinguished member of the Scarlet Dynasty."

 

Jaja nodded thoughtfully. "I agree with the sentiment. However there remain quite a few questions to be answered. I would have thought that fending off a wild animal would be well within the capabilities of one of our militia."

 

"It was no mere animal," Ghora advised him. "The beast was an Anuhle, if you know the word."

 

"I do," agreed Jaja warily. "But are you sure? The only demons that should be in Salt-Founded Glory are those that have been summoned by Lalaca. I'm not aware of any other sorcerers in the city."

 

"Well, there's me, but I don't make a habit of summoning them."

 

"...you're a sorcerer?" asked Jaja curiously.

 

"Don't give yourself airs," objected Kanuna, stabbing his finger towards Ghora. "Your thaumaturgy is well known but to call yourself a sorcerer is too far. All know that only the Exalted may practise those arts."

 

Ghora smirked. "And you base this on your extensive knowledge of the arts, do you? I'd expect you to be more careful making judgements after the embarrassment you faced last year."

 

"That's enough, both of you." Jaja placed both hands on his desk and pushed himself to his feet. "Whether or not Ghora is a true sorcerer is not immediately relevant."

 

"But sir, we have only Ghora's word that this was a demon. Surely his credentials to make such a judgement are highly relevant." The Constable looked appealingly at his superior.

 

"Hmm. Well, perhaps. I'm sure that Lalaca can determine the validity of Ghora's claim if need be. For now, I'll accept it at face value." The Judge raised his hands to quell Kanuna. "Provided that he can explain how he comes to mastery of the arts when he is, by all accounts, neither Dragonblooded nor a spirit of any kind."

 

"An easy matter to explain," Ghora assured him. "You are aware perhaps of the enlightenment that can be achieved by a diligent student of the Immaculate martial arts, even should he be a mere mortal? Such men and women can utilise their essence in ways similar to, but naturally inferior to, the magicks of their Dragonblooded superiors."

 

"I am an educated man, the principle is not unfamiliar to me," confirmed Jaja.

 

"Then I am sure that you will understand that just as a mortal may awaken their essence to achieve such prowess in the martial arts, it is similarly possible for a dedicated student to achieve the same via the occult arts. I make no claim to be the equal of a Dragonblooded sorcerer but such an education naturally touches upon demons and their ways."

 

"Then you could summon such a demon?" asked Jaja cautiously.

 

"With sufficient preparation, yes." Ghora grimaced. "I would hesitate to do so, however. Once summoned, the Exalted may bind and command demons via ancient and binding treaties. Mortals, however, are granted no such authority and I would most probably have to banish it immediately lest it seek to slay me and wreak all manner of havoc. And two such spells in rapid succession would be a grave strain for a mere mortal."

 

"So if you didn't summon the Anuhle," asked Nyaya, "Who did?"

 

Ghora spread his hands. "There are several possibilities, but it must be assumed that it could be someone with a desire to cause harm to Mnemon Dhana. And if that is the case, then it is likely that they will make another attempt on his life."

 

"If Lalaca is the only other sorcerer in the city then that narrows down the possibilities to one," observed Kanuna. "I'd need to call up the whole Militia to arrest him though."

 

"I'm constantly amazed by you, Constable."

 

Kanuna preened at Jaja's words.

 

"Your ability to be accurate in what you say and yet wrong in your conclusions is quite remarkable," the young Judge continued. "It's entirely possible that Lalaca is behind this, but there could just as easily be a sorcerer that I'm unaware of behind this. They might even be outside the city - distance wouldn't have to be a barrier. Sorcerers don't need to supervise demons at all times, I don't know what the limits are."

 

"In theory, there aren't many. But the Anuhle would have to walk here from wherever the sorcerer is so it's unlikely whoever sent it is more than a few days travel away."

 

"So it could be anyone with a grudge," Jaja concluded. "I'm sure Prince Laxhander and the Satrap will be delighted to know about this. House Mnemon will want answers and we don't have many." He looked over at Nyaya and Ghora. "In a case like this, you are both liable to fall under suspicion - at least until we know what House Mnemon's position will be, neither of you is to leave Salt-Founded Glory."

 

There was a discreet knock upon the door and on being granted permission a servant slid the door aside. "Your pardon, Master Jaja, but Mnemon Dhana has awakened and requests the presence of those who saved his life."

 

E-X-A-L-T-E-D

 

The Immaculate Temple in Salt-Founded Glory had been rebuilt just over two centuries ago at the expense of one of Prince Laxhander's ancestors, probably to underline his loyalty to the Realm after the brief period of self-rule when garrisons had been withdrawn to fight the Anathema Joachim.

 

Then again, maybe he'd been genuinely pious, like his current descendant. Laxhander had made considerable donations over the last few years and dozens of monks were engaged in using great timbers from the Middle Lands to extend one of their buildings. They could be heard chanting as they worked in teams to move the weighty beams, through the windows of their infirmary building. Like any devout son of the Dynasty, if Mnemon Dhana couldn't obtain access to one of the Dragonblooded who devoted themselves to the arts of medicine, the Immaculate Order were a respectable substitute.

 

"I gather I have the two of you to thank for saving my life," the eminent and well-connected dynast observed from his bed. The blankets had been discreetly arranged to mask the loss of his leg.

 

"I didn't do much except get smacked around," Nyaya admitted a little hastily. Ghora had gathered that she had no interest in being here.

 

Well that was just too bad, she'd dragged him back to this mess and he didn't see one damn reason to let her get away while he was stuck with it. "You're far too modest. You survived when others didn't. If you hadn't kept it busy then no doubt the Anuhle would have finished the job before I arrived."

 

"It was demonic in nature?" asked Dhana sadly. "I'd suspected as much. Then the..." He stared at Ghora for a second and settled upon: "Gentleman is correct. You did much better than my bodyguards did."

 

"We don't often see Demons on the streets," observed Kanuna from behind the pair. To his obvious embarrassment he'd been treated as a poor second to the duo that Dhana considered to be the heroes of the previous night's excitement. "Do you have any idea why you might have been targeted?"

 

"I don't see why."

 

Not even the most sheltered person in that room believed that. Enemies were effectively mandatory for every member of the Scarlet Dynasty, if not for your own deeds then for the actions of your kin. And with the Scarlet Throne vacant, in-fighting between the Great Houses was reaching levels that even the least of the satrapies were becoming aware of it.

 

Concluding that no one else was going to have the audacity to openly challenge the statement, Ghora decided to take up the gauntlet. "Because you're kin to Mnemon? Because you're wealthy?" He thought back to gossip overheard along the docks. "Because you kicked Lalaca out of your bed two months ago?"

 

Dhana's face fell. "My reasons for that are not your concern."

 

"You suspect Lalaca?" asked Nyaya.

 

"It wasn't him," Dhana insisted. "I no longer consider him a friend but he would not send an Anuhle after me."

 

"How can you be sure?"

 

Dhana sighed. "Let us simply say that I know him well enough to understand his style. He might be bold enough to try to seek revenge for our falling out but he wouldn't send an Anuhle after me."

 

"That's fairly specific," Ghora noted. "Well that narrows it down to the sorcerers of every other Great House, any Infernal Cults in the area and - Dragons help you if it's this - one of the Anathema."

 

"And not an upstart mortal sorcerer?" asked Kanuna slyly. "How do we know that you didn't stage this to make a good impression on Lord Dhana? It would be easy for you to get rid of the demon if you'd scripted that."

 

Ghora spread his hands and bowed. "I'm flattered that you think so highly of me, that a mere mortal could have such control over a Demon."

 

Nyaya coughed for attention. "You realise that whoever sent it, since it failed they're likely to try again?"

 

"A point well made," agreed Kanuna. "May I post some security here, Lord Dhana?"

 

"Hardly necessary." The dynastic scion gestured around him. "I am surrounded by Immaculate monks, good Constable. I am father and son of Dragonblooded and thus entitled to their protection."

 

"It's your funeral," Ghora grunted.

 

E-X-A-L-T-E-D

 

"If demons are around then we'll need a sorcerer or some other demon hunter," Kanuna mused as the three left the temple. "Lalaca's usually co-operative, but he's a suspect so I'd rather not bring him unless I have to."

 

"And he has the ear of the Prince," Nyaya added under her breath.

 

The Constable shot her a withering look. "That is a factor. I suppose that since you're already involved, I'll keep you active to assist me. Lord Dhana seems to look on you with some favour."

 

"You can't do that! I've got obligations! Last night was my month's service in the militia."

 

"This is an emergency. We'll extend the wages paid to your family for your service."

 

From the look on Nyaya's face, that wasn't the issue. "But -"

 

"You swore service to the Prince's laws and his officials when you were enlisted, woman," Kanuna reminded her. "That doesn't just apply for your own convenience. I'm sure your family will be pleased that you're providing honourable service and not crawling around the taverns as usual."

 

Ghora let the two get ahead of him, easy enough with their longer legs and sidled towards an alleyway. He'd been dragged enough into this mess already and getting involved in demons and politics was all too likely to draw attention to him. All it would take was rumour of a sorcerer his height and he'd have to deal with more of his past business than he cared to.

 

He'd managed to get within a step of the alleyway when an Immaculate Monk dashed out of the gates of the temple and spotted him. "Master Ghora!" he called out, turning heads - including Kanuna's. The Constable scowled ominously when he saw how nearly the diminutive man had come to slipping away.

 

"Master Ghora!" the monk repeated. "Lord Dhana asks a service of you."

 

That tore it. No one in this land would decline a 'request' from one of the Dragonblooded and few would dare as much from their unexalted kinsfolk. Under the right circumstances, Ghora might have done so, but these were not those. "I'm coming, I'm coming," he sighed.

 

"When you're done with that, be sure to come to the Militia Armoury," ordered Kanuna. "I want to keep an eye of you when we're investigating this."

 

"I don't recall taking orders from you." Ghora adjusted his robes around him, pulling the hood down further over his hairless head.

 

"You're still a suspect in this. If you want to prove your innocence, then you'll want to make sure that we find out who's really behind this. Think of it as protective custody - if you're under militia supervision we can testify that you're not summoning demons if another one turns up."

 

Ugh. "Fine." Making a mental note to take the time to see that Kanuna died in some humiliating fashion if he had to skip town, Ghora turned back to the monk. "So what can I do for Lord Dhana? I doubt his leg's in condition to be sewn back on, after an Anuhle was chewing upon it."

 

"I haven't been informed of the details," the monk admitted, ushering him back into the Temple's grounds. "Lord Dhana states it is a matter of discretion." His voice hinted that whatever it was must be a matter of some moral turpitude if Dhana wasn't willing to entrust it to him.

 

He was probably right, at least to the sense that Dhana was no doubt involved in something that wouldn't appeal to an ascetic monk - but that wasn't unusual for the Scarlet dynasty.

 

When he was ushered into the dynast's room, he found a priest examining the stump of the leg with care.

 

"Here's the man who treated the wound first," Dhana declared on spotting him. "Master Ghora, this is Brother Questing Hand, the temple's chief physician."

 

The two exchanged guarded bows. "You have a neat hand with cautery," admitted the monk. "How did you get an iron hot enough in the middle of a street?"

 

"Trade secret," Ghora declared hastily. One look at his scalpels and the Immaculate monk would probably be minded to confiscate them for use by his Order. There would be compensation, of course, but mere money would hardly replace items forged for a military field surgeon in the First Age. "I hope you've cleaned the wounds, I was in too much hurry to clean thoroughly."

 

"We've used an astringent," Questing Hand assured him. He looked down at Dhana. "I suppose that you'll want to talk privately."

 

"It would be appreciated."

 

Dhana waited until the monk had left the room and then asked Ghora: "Can you make sure that no one eavesdrops?"

 

"No more so than you can," the surgeon admitted. "There's probably a spell for that but I'm not familiar with one and I'd be pressed to cast another spell right now. I didn't want to take any chances with the banishment spell so I made it as powerful as I could."

 

"I'm can't argue with your priorities there," agreed Dhana quickly. "And I'm indebted that you saved my life twice over last night, but now I hope that I can call on you for another favour."

 

Ghora rubbed his chin and then gestured for the crippled man to continue.

 

"When I was attacked I lost a token. A medallion made in the form of a jade obol, but slightly smaller. The chain had broken so it was in my pocket. I don't suppose that you picked it up did you?"

 

"I didn't," Ghora assured him. "When I was done patching you up I was so exhausted I barely managed to stagger home."

 

"Then either it is on the street or someone else has found it," Dhana concluded. "It has personal significance to me - it was a gift from my great-grandmother and there are only a few like it in all Creation. Do you think you might be able to find it?"

 

"I can certainly make the attempt." He made a ring out of his fingers. "About so large?"

 

Dhana squinted. "Perhaps a little smaller," he corrected. "I'm told it was originally to be a coin but the jade used was adulterated slightly which gave it a darker hue than ordinary white jade - almost like ivory. The coins affected were shaved down to make sure they weren't used as legal tender."

 

Ghora nodded but his mind raced. He wasn't entirely sure if Dhana was honestly ignorant or lying, but jade of the described colour wasn't adulterated as such. It was in fact distinctive of jade mined around the dread city of Stygia, a proud necropolis of the Underworld.

 

Why would a mortal of dynast blood be carrying such a token?


	3. Nyaya

Nyaya finally made it back to her family's home around the same time that she'd left it the day before. Once a humble workshop with a yard opening onto the street of Tailors, it now extended back three times as far, with two additional workshops and a separate house shoehorned in between the bamboo walls.

 

She'd barely managed to walk through the gates when one of her cousins, carrying buckets of food from the kitchens forwards to those still at work, spotted her. The younger woman started at the sight of her - possibly as much due to the different clothes she was wearing - and hastened her pace into the workshop.

 

Well that was as good an indicator of where mother was as anything else.

 

Against the chance that her mother would be too busy to come out, Nyaya kept walking but the slap of feet on the raised wooden floor of the workshop made it clear that chance had once again not favoured her.

 

If years of mistakenly thinking dice have to favour me one day eventually, haven't cured me of optimism, what will? she thought to herself, pausing and turning to watch her mother step into view.

 

Janani looked much like her daughter, broad and with a gut that had swollen as soon as it had the slightest excuse. Her hair was black and coarse, tied back beneath a colourful headscarf. She didn't have the scars that marked Nyaya's body, but the lines on her face had marked her just as deeply.

 

"And where have you been all day? Not cleaning up the workshop I gather?" she called out.

 

"Constable Kanuna extended my militia obligation."

 

"And did he give you those lovely clothes? Not my work, I think. Too good for your family's clothes are you now?"

 

Nyaya took a deep breath. "No mother. These are borrowed." And not really lovely compared to her mother's work, just of a cut and fabric that she couldn't afford on the stipend she was allowed as an apprentice of the household.

 

"So you're away all day on militia business, come back in someone else's clothes and I suppose you think you'll be getting fed at the table, you irresponsible girl! I thought you might be growing up. Go do your work - I don't want to hear about you going into the house until that workshop is spic and span."

 

Her daughter spun the spread-the-water knife in one hand. It had been most of a day since she'd eaten - a skewer of grilled meats yesterday evening - and she'd looked forwards to at least a cup of beer and a bowl of rice. "The extension of my militia obligation isn't over, mother. I'm expected back at the armoury for sunset."

 

"Why would Kanuna do that?" Janani narrowed her eyes. "You're sleeping with him?"

 

"No."

 

"Humph. Well that's something. He'd be a decent catch but why'd he wed you if he can get what he wants without that."

 

"I doubt very much if the Constable is interested in me." For one thing, he was ambitious enough that he'd want someone of higher status than a tailor's daughter. "And given what an ass he is, I'd not take him anyway."

 

The older woman snorted. "If you knew what was good for you... well you showed how much you knew about that fifteen years ago. So why does he want you around then?"

 

"I can't tell you." It would make life a lot easier if she could, but Kanuna had been clear that he didn't want panic on the streets and knowing a demon was walking (had walked, though rumour wouldn't care) them would cause that. Disorder would reflect on the Constable and Hesiesh would make his bed in the north before Kanuna would court that.

 

"Aha?" Janani sniffed at her daughter. "You know your uncle Hadri was our volunteer for almost twenty years - and our father before him. Never once were they kept on duty after their night of the month. You take it up and within a month you're so invaluable they have to keep you around?"

 

"At least in this case." Nyaya spread her hands. "It's a little more coin for the family."

 

"Little enough." She huffed. "Well, if you have to go then wear those clothes. Perhaps without my work on those clothes, no one will recognise you as one of ours."

 

Nyaya felt her cheeks flush as if they'd been slapped. "As I said," she said with a tongue that felt twice as thick as it should, "They're borrowed. I'll be returning them to Abunai the Younger this evening."

 

"He's married, girl. With children of his own."

 

"I'm not warming his bed either." She considered telling Janani what had happened, but breaking the unspoken deal of being discreet about the clerk's misdemeanour would have sat ill with her. "Mine were dirtied last night and I've had no chance to come here until now." She wondered if she should have said 'come home'.

 

Janani shook her head. "Well do what you must and be off then," she grumbled, turning back to her loom. "What I am to do with a daughter that won't obey and no one will marry, I do not know."

 

"Curse me out behind my back I suppose," muttered Nyaya.

 

"What was that?"

 

"I'm pretty sure you heard me."

 

E-X-A-L-T-E-D

 

"You and she-who-must-be-obeyed arguing again?"

 

When she left An Teng, Nyaya remembered her uncle Hadri as being tall, broad-shouldered and with a smile for everyone. Now he was hunched and his shoulders stooped. The once long hair she'd admired in a top-knot was little more than a fringe of grey around the sides and back of his head.

 

But the smile was the same.

 

"You heard then?"

 

"I think half the street heard you talking at each other." He shook his head and grinned. "I'd say you should try to talk to each other, but I'd be wasting my breath, wouldn't I?"

 

"Probably. Has she ever listened to anyone?"

 

Hadri put his arms around her shoulders. "No more than you did when you left us, little Nyaya. We breed stubborn women in this family. It can be very helpful at times, if difficult to live with."

 

She flinched slightly as he pressed a little too much on one of her bruises.

 

"What happened to you?" he asked in alarm. "A fight."

 

"Yes." She hugged him back, cautious of herself. "I bled a little, got a lot of bruises. Dislocated my shoulder."

 

"The left again?" he hissed. "You have to be careful of that. Have you seen a surgeon? The militia kept one on call in my day."

 

"If they do now, it's the first I've heard of it. I went to Ghora, down by the docks."

 

Her uncle frowned. "I don't know him. Whose family is he from?"

 

"He's a foreigner." Nyaya saw Hadri's eyes sadden and added: "He's cheap."

 

"We can afford a proper surgeon for you. Does your mother know you're hurt?"

 

"No. And don't tell her. She might pay for a surgeon, but she'd hold it over me just like she does everything else. Anything to remind me of my place."

 

"You resent it that much?"

 

"I know I didn't complete my apprenticeship," Nyaya sighed. "I've never asked her for more than that. I swore before the idols of the Golden Lord and the Pale Mistress that I sought no more place than to finish my apprenticeship as part of the family. But she has to keep hammering it in, acting like I'm throwing my weight around. When did I ever demand more than the others? Tell me that?"

 

"Apprentices are children. You're a great many things, my niece, but you're not a child. And so..." He shrugged. "She expects more."

 

"Well I can't be what she wants." Nyaya released her grip on him. "I have to get changed and go back out."

 

"I can go instead," he offered. "I still remember how to use a spread-the-water knife in a pinch and you can get some sleep."

 

Nyaya's lips curled into a fond smile. "No uncle, you don't need to do that. I'll be fine."

 

E-X-A-L-T-E-D

 

The attic room Nyaya shared with the other apprentices was empty but looking at their bedrolls she could see some merit to what Hadri said. The others were smaller and surrounded by the panoply of youth aspiring to adulthood. Her own and the knapsack that all her possessions were crammed into was a contrast.

 

Rummaging through the sack, she pulled out her spare shirt and kilt. Made in the workshops below they were sturdy, practical and with a traditional pattern woven into it, one that would endure more than the dye prints on the clothes that she was wearing. It wasn't that her mother and the other master tailors couldn't make fine garments - they did. In financial terms it was about half the business that they got - but depending on the market for luxuries was risky so the other half of the business was journeymen and apprentices making the sort of clothes that could be worn working.

 

There was a lot more demand for that sort of thing.

 

Stripping down, she pulled a jar from where it had been nestled into her cloak and started rubbing the paste inside across her bruises and the healing abrasions. The jar was about half empty and Nyaya tried to be economical - she'd bought it from an alchemist near Lap and she certainly didn't have the means to have someone bring her more.

 

Made with a weed that grew only on the sides of the mountainous statue in whose lap the city of Lap lay, the paste was sworn to clean and numb the pain of minor wounds. It worked, in her experience, fairly well. It would also stain her clothes if she clad herself before it had dried, so she sat there and waited.

 

Waited and thought.

 

Nyaya didn't know Mnemon Dhana, although now that she thought back, she'd seen him in passing before - walking through the upper districts of the city. He'd been just another rich man wearing white robes - if she'd registered him at all she'd thought he was bragging of an association with House Ragara, the family of An Teng's satrap. Apparently both Ragara and Mnemon incorporated white into their heraldry.

 

He was just a mortal though. Why set a demon on him? It seemed excessive. Were all the mortal assassins busy? If a sorcerer could be spared to summon a demon for this purpose, it couldn't be lack of resources that was the problem.

 

Of course, using a third party like a demon was deniable - it wasn't as if a demon could testify and even if it did, who would trust its words?

 

Dhana said that Lalaca wouldn't send a demon after him, even though they'd fallen out. Of course, he could be wrong about that. The sorcerer wasn't averse to using demons in general, witness how he'd hired one out to Abunai the Elder all those years ago.

 

Who else might be behind it? Ghora claimed he could summon a demon but not control one. That seemed to let him out, assuming it could be confirmed. He and Dhana didn't seem to know each other so there probably wasn't a personal motive. He might have been hired though.

 

There were other sorcerers of course. If a Dragonblooded sorcerer was doing this for political reasons it would be almost impossible to prove anything. It might be dangerous even to try. Getting between two warring Great Houses invited getting run down by raging demi-gods who'd barely notice you were even there.

 

Outside of that? Well there were always rumours that the Lintha pirates - a plague upon shipping in this part of the world - who were rumoured to worship demons. It was just a rumour, of course, because the only people who could confirm it were either the Lintha themselves or people who they'd captured - the latter of whom, it was gravely agreed by every sailing community Nyaya knew of, were never seen again.

 

That's probably a bit farfetched, she thought to herself. Why would the Lintha, assuming that they can summon a demon, send it after one lone dynast? Why would he come to their attention? If someone - if anyone - wants to strike at a Great House, there are better, more damaging targets and while those would be harder targets to cause harm to, if you're going to send a demon then you're prepared to handle those challenges.

 

What's different about Dhana?

 

Then she sat up sharply. And why was even down in the lower districts at night anyway? It was too late at night for any regular business and in his social circles, nothing would have been happening down there.

 

That left... what? A social encounter outside the upper classes of Salt-Founded Glory? Well it wasn't impossible, but it wasn't that likely either. And if it wasn't a social call he wanted to keep quiet then it had to be business. Not regular business but the sort that's carried out at the dead of night...

 

And might well have demons cut loose if things went sour.

 

"Pale Mistress and Maiden of Endings," Nyaya murmured, "Let me be wrong. Please, please let me be wrong."

 

If it was something Dhana wanted to keep discreet then there was every likelihood he could simply tell Kanuna that it was none of the militia's business and officially that would be that. If Kanuna was for whatever reason mad enough to investigate anyway, a word from Dhana would bring the wrath of Prince Laxhander down upon everyone involved.

 

Which left every likelihood that figuring out who was behind this might have to be done behind the back of the victim and his powerful family.

 

Nyaya ran her fingers over the paste and judged it dry enough for her to cover it up. She pulled on her clean clothes and folded those she'd been wearing. If she detoured down to the temple of the Golden Lord then she could make a prayer and then drop off the clothes at Abunai's before reporting in.


	4. Ghora

Sometimes the easiest place to start is at the beginning. Burrowing deep inside his robe for shelter from the sun, Ghora picked his way through the streets of An Teng towards the site of last night's excitement.

 

When they noticed him, the Tengese gave him a wide berth as an obvious foreigner. More often, given his lack of height, they didn't notice him until it was already too late and he had to scamper through the crowds without regard for dignity, in order to avoid a trampling.

 

Around the docks, where a stumble could mean dropping to the ground with your heavy burden upon you, people were better about watching where they put their feet. And almost without exception, wise enough to keep those big feet well clear of the little man with the red-and-black painted face.

 

Examples of the exceptions to that had been made examples of. Don't cross a sorcerer. They may or may not be quick to anger but they have precious little patience for subtlety.

 

With the opening of the day's commerce, the street was well trampled already. Wherever the token had fallen - assuming it had ever been here but that might just be his nasty suspicious mind – it was vanishingly unlikely that no one had picked up something looking like an obol. If there was even the slightest chance that it was valuable then it would be gone by now.

 

Still, there was no harm in looking and if he didn't find it here... well, there were other ways of tracking something like that.

 

Trekking back and forth across the street didn't turn up any tokens (except the devotions that donkeys leave everywhere) but it did draw attention. Some of that attention came from the street merchants or the passers-by. Ghora wasn't concerned about that. If any of them asked what he was doing, he'd be more than happy to send them off with a flea in the ear or a kick to somewhere they'd not enjoy. Any of them except...

 

Well hello there, he thought as he spotted a figure no taller than himself, tusks like an elephant jutting from beneath the hood of its robe, hands clasped behind its back as it observed him. No one else seemed to notice it - in fact, travellers simply walked past it or through it, obliviously.

 

I thought as much: hard to ignore someone with as much essence as I do tramping around on your road, isn't it little spirit? Feigning the same obliviousness that the other pedestrians had, Ghora kept searching the ground, waiting patiently as the road god closed in curiously. You don't know what to make of me, do you? The dock-spirits haven't spread warnings, or if they have then you didn't heed them.

 

It's often said that the walls have ears. To anyone with the barest grasp of elementary theology - admittedly a field of study that the Immaculate Order did their best to monopolise - to that list could be added the floor, the ceiling and just about anything, including the roads, for they all have gods assigned to police them. Such gods take pains to know everything about their assigned territory and if approached the right way might be persuaded to share that knowledge... or might simply drown you in more detail than any sane person would want to know.

 

Ghora waited until the spirit of the road was in arm's reach and then his hand snapped out, catching hold of it by the arm. While no more than apparition to those on the street - and an invisible one at that! - it was only a minor magic for the little surgeon to bypass those protections. "I'm so pleased to see you," he greeted it in the ancient language of the Gods, a tongue that had remained unchanged since before the recorded history of mankind and one that his teacher had insisted that he master before he shared even the least jot or tittle of arcana to his slave-cum-apprentice. "Please join me for a cup of tea."

 

Given the choice between stick and carrot - more specifically between the firm grip upon its bicep and the spoke offer of hospitality - the godling materialised itself upon the street and tossed back its hood to reveal an elephantine head. "I would be pleased to share tea with you, traveller upon my road," it replied. "Perhaps at the tea house a short distance west of here. I don't recall any immaculate monks ever visiting it and the tea is quite fine."

 

The latter seemed quite unlikely given the shabby exterior that probably explained the first fact, but Ghora wasn't really concerned about the tea. "They can be quite narrow-minded," he agreed. "And I'd imagine that with a demon sighted in the area, they may be paying more attention than usual to your road."

 

"They may indeed," agreed the god. "I was quite relieved that you dealt with it before it could do more damage. Not that I wouldn't have been perfectly happy to see it dealt with earlier of course."

 

Accepting the latter statement as a simple hedge thrown up against Ghora citing it as cause to see the god as indebted to him for the banishment, the little surgeon waved it off casually. "We all do what we can. Alas, it seems that one of the victims has lost something of value... quite a curiosity in fact. One wonders what lengths he might go to in order to recover it."

 

"Sending a sorcerer out after it, perhaps?" asked the spirit drily. "Even a mortal of your heritage - and yes, I have seen your kind before -"

 

Ghora deliberately refrained from the temptation to wrap his fingers around the god's throat and squeeze. "Naturally you have."

 

"Indeed. Well, even so and allowing for the training of a sorcerer, it's clear you're more than a mortal now. At first I thought an endowment of power by some divinity..."

 

"Something of the kind."

 

"Ah..." The god paused expectantly.

 

Ghora sipped his tea and waited.

 

"I am not familiar with the nature of your endowment and I have seen some considerable variety over the ages," the god admitted at last. "Perhaps if you were to satisfy my own curiosity I might be able to direct you in attending to the curiosity that you seek?"

 

"Let us say that the item's origins are quite coincidentally if a kind with my own."

 

"Oh?" The tusks jerked as the god chewed on that fact and then it raised its cup. "Meaning no offense on a personal level but matters are significantly awry that one of your... associations is of such power."

 

"Awry indeed. And the token?"

 

The god nodded. "You were observed last night by a lady who I choose not to challenge. She removed it."

 

A lady that a god dares not tattle on. "She sounds impressive."

 

"She has patrons in this world and in others. I disapprove of your benefactors, but it does not seem that they would be fonder of this lady's other patrons than I am so I will give you her name." It leant forwards and whispered, "Nirvasana," into Ghora's ear.

 

The name didn't mean anything to Ghora, but if the Road God called her a lady then she must be of some distinction. How many of that name could there be? "I thank you."

 

"Please do not." The elephantine dwarf raised and drained its cup of tea. "Indeed, better for us all that I was not here." It dematerialised, leaving Ghora with the empty cup, his own half-drained cup and the bill.

 

He sipped on the tea, which wasn't his usual taste but why waste it?

 

So, another name to investigate. Nirvasana. If she'd observed the attack, did that mean that she was behind it? Was the entire thing staged to get hold of this token or was she simply taking the opportunity?

 

Whatever it was, Ghora wanted more than before to get his hands upon it.

 

E-X-A-L-T-E-D

 

Tempting as it was to rely on more arcane resources, Ghora instead made his way back towards the Immaculate Temple. Confronting the god had tapped into the scraps of essence left to him after the strain of banishing the demon last night and if there was another demon - or worse - then he'd need everything he could muster.

 

Fortunately, there might be a way to prepare for that.

 

"Can I... help you?" asked the monk standing at the centre of the gateway. Not the same one that had been there before.

 

It occurred to Ghora that standing guard at the gate must be tedious and there was probably some form of lesson to be learned - or so the senior monks might claim when posting their juniors to do so. "I'm here to see Mnemon Dhana. I visited earlier and he asked me to look into a matter for him."

 

The tall, muscular monk looked perplexed. "I believe that he is in the infirmary, but I haven't been advised he's... accepting visitors."

 

"That's fine. I'm telling you now that he is."

 

"I can't just let someone in to visit Lady Mnemon's great-grandson, particularly after someone nearly killed him."

 

Ghora crossed his arms. "The reason he wasn't killed by that demon is that I fought it off. I note that no young, self-righteous, unexalted Immaculate Monk was there to do the hard work. Probably busy standing here and showing off his muscles to the ladies walking past."

 

The monk's cheeks coloured. "We take oaths of celibacy."

 

"Well if you don't need that equipment then I can remove it for you easily enough. Or, since you're evidently not important enough to make a decision on your own, why don't you go fetch someone who can vouch for me."

 

"If I leave my post, what's to stop you from just walking in?"

 

"I cannot believe that you're suggesting I would show such disrespect to the Immaculate Dragons. Clearly Mela would strike me down immediately if I tried something so underhanded." He paused. "More precisely, the two monks very discreetly watching you from the garden would intervene."

 

"Ah." The Monk turned around and looked over at the garden where, in addition to wielding a hoe and rake with sober discipline, an elderly man and woman were pretending not to watch him.

 

"Do you get the feeling that they don't trust you to guard the gate unsupervised?"

 

"You're a remarkably abrasive... whatever you are."

 

"A demon in the sack according to my last lover, but that was a long time ago and in another city," Ghora said a little smugly. "Now are you going to let me in?"

 

E-X-A-L-T-E-D

 

Mnemon Dhana was apparently resting, which Ghora approved of in general as it would help the recovery process but found annoying in the specific since it made talking to him rather pointless.

 

Not being particularly inclined to wait, the little surgeon woke up his patient by prodding the man's leg-stump with one finger. The dynast woke immediately, swearing at some length. Not being intimately familiar with the degenerate dialect of Old Realm currently spoken by the Scarlet Dynasty, Ghora nodded encouragingly and took mental notes until Dhana ran down.

 

"You've not lost sensation there, that's a good sign," he announced at that point.

 

"I'm so pleased to find that out," the one-legged man observed through clenched teeth. "Did you manage to find the token I asked about?"

 

"That may have got political. You wouldn't happen to know a Lady Nirvasana would you?"

 

"Nirvasana?" He thought a moment. "I think so, one of the dowager princess' ladies in waiting. How is she involved?"

 

"It seems that she recovered the token. Which could mean everything or nothing."

 

Dhana frowned. "She's one of the brighter ladies in waiting, although she goes to some pains to hide it. One of the older ones as well. You're right, this is political."

 

"And here I thought it was just a family keepsake."

 

The deadpan sarcasm penetrated the dynast's thoughts. "Yes, yes. I apologise. It is true that I received it from my great-grandmother though."

 

"Yes. The redoubtable Mnemon. I can quite understand a sorcerer of her repute possessing Stygian jade. Still, politically embarrassing for her to be handing it out. Tsk tsk."

 

"If you're looking for a bribe..."

 

Ghora smiled beneficently (which looked horrific). "How nice to deal with someone who knows how these things work."

 

"Ugh. What do you want?"

 

Touching the tips of his long fingers together, Ghora eyed the man and then told him, "I want to attune to the Manse in your estate. This is in your best interests: by meditating then I can gather enough essence to banish another demon should one be sent."

 

Dhana turned his face away from Ghora. "Sorcerers. You always want access to the manse. It's all that matters to you."

 

It took a moment for Ghora to put that together. "Unless the manse is more powerful than I had heard, I don't think Lalaca would need it enough to do anything he found unpleasant. He's Dragonblooded after all. They respire essence much more effectively than mortals."

 

The notion appeared to startle Dhana quite a bit. "Really, but he said..."

 

"My dear dynast, how did you get to this age without realising that people lie? Most likely he suspected something of what your great-grandmother is up to with the Dead and decided to distance himself, for his own safety. It's remarkable how many sorcerers with entourages of dozens of demons get squeamish over one little ghost."

 

Dhana nodded thoughtfully, but he didn't deny that he'd been up to something with the Dead. Ghora bit back a curse. The nearest major shadowland, the City of Dead Flowers, was a hundred miles to the south. He'd thought he was a safe distance away, but now agents of the dead - and who else could be behind this but a Deathlord? - were at work here.


	5. Nyaya

The temple of the Golden Lord was still impressive but not as well maintained as the Immaculate Temple, making clear where Prince Laxhander and the more politically opportune members of the nobility were donating funds these days. Nonetheless, centuries of support in Salt-Founded Glory made the temple one of the most impressive buildings in the city and the lack of attention from the upper circles of society made the priests who maintained it more welcoming to those who came to offer prayers.

Nyaya bought two joss sticks and lit them in the beam of much reflected light from the arrangement of glass and mirrors in the ceiling. Placing them in the main altar she composed her thoughts.

Honoured Golden Lord, thank you for watching over An Teng. Please also watch over my family, even my mother, and the city of Salt-Founded Glory for I fear we are enmeshed in the politics of the Realm and already a demon has stalked the streets of our city.

The prayer made her feel a little better about the sensation, right up until she reached the door of the temple and found herself confronted at close quarters by everything that she wasn't: a slim elegant woman wearing elaborate - and expensive - silk robes and tasteful jewelry. She was even carrying a fan and looked at Nyaya frankly over it.

Feeling every ounce of her gut and sure that her face was flaming, Nyaya backed up a step and tried to walk around her. The hand holding the fan flicked around and blocked her. "Please, Nyaya, let us step aside that we may talk more discreetly than upon the temple's threshold."

"I..."

The lips no longer hidden behind the fan curved into a pout. "Please, this is for the sake of An Teng."

That could cover a multitude of sins, part of Nyaya reminded her. Another part of her felt a certain resonance between the words and her prayer of moments ago. Perhaps the Golden Lord was offering aid in some indirect fashion. In either case, hearing the lady out might be worthwhile.

"Where would you like to speak?" she asked.

"Not far." The lady lowered her fan slightly and turned to walk along the street.

Trailing behind her, Nyaya realised that she gave the appearance of being a bodyguard, if not as smartly outfitted as the guards of the nobility usually were. If discretion was required then it was a reasonable cover she decided and quickly took up position a pace behind and to once side, her knife in hand and ready to protect her 'charge'.

It truly was not far to their destination, an old but still sturdy looking townhouse. While this area was no longer fashionable, the house didn't show signs of being re-arranged into a tenement or whatever various uses the other houses on the street now served.

"Who lives here?" she asked once they were through the gate and the woman led her towards one of the side-wings.

"At the moment, no one." Inside, the chamber was gracefully laid out but unfurnished save for two cushions and a low table. "Please, seat yourself and I will answer all your questions."

"Oh? Then who sent the demon to kill Mnemon Dhana?"

"I don't know, although I have suspicions."

Of course it couldn't be that easy. "That's not much of an answer." Nyaya sat down on one of the cushions.

"I didn't promise that my answers would please you." Her companion also seated herself. "Perhaps I should begin by introducing myself. My name is Nirvasana and I serve the late Prince's wife. This house has been used by the royal family for clandestine meetings for many years. Admittedly, most often when a Prince wished to keep a mistress outside of the court."

"Is that your role here?"

Nirvasana shook her head. "Prince Laxhander still dreams he can marry a scion of the Scarlet Dynasty. He has no time for mortal women unless they can boast the blood of Dragons in their recent ancestry. If he knew why I was here, he would be gravely offended."

Closing her eyes for a moment, Nyaya guessed: "Because Mnemon Dhana's injury will embarrass the Prince in the Dynasty's eyes?"

"Ah... close, but wrong. It is unlikely that House Mnemon will blame the Prince for Dhana's injury, particularly as you, by extension the Prince's servant, sprang to his defense. However, Lady Mnemon is a strong contender to take her mother's empty throne. Anything that touches on that is a matter of great sensitivity."

"I don't see how this would relate," the older woman observed, "but if it does, would it not be best for us to disassociate ourselves from the matter? Nothing good can come of being caught between the Great Houses."

"Again, your involvement makes that difficult: whether we want it or not, the Prince has extended protection to Mnemon's mortal descendant and we cannot recall that."

"So I should have let him die?"

That got a laugh from Nirvasana. "An impossible position for you to be in, I know. I promise that my lady the dowager does not lay any blame upon you. But if we are to extricate ourselves and An Teng from this crisis then we need to be as discreet as possible in identifying the factions. And who knows, we might even be able to arrange the Prince's arranged marriage for him. There are few rewards within his power he would not bestow on those responsible for such a coup."

Nyaya nodded. And those rewards would be yours, not those of an obscure militiawoman. "So what secrets do you know that lead you to place such significance on this?"

Reaching into her sleeve, the lady produced what appeared to be a jade obol. Taking a second glance, Nyaya noted that the edges had been shaved, probably to salvage the jade from it. That was a capital offense - the Realm had little mercy on those who defaced their currency. Actually, they had little mercy in general.

"Contrary to appearances, this is not a real obol - there are some very slight flaws to the carving and the jade appears to be adulterated."

"So a forged coin... wait..."

Nyaya thought back to the night before. She'd seen something... Taking the coin from the willing hand of Nirvasana she weighed it in her own hand before snapping her wrist and throwing it at the wall. It bounced off at an angle and ended up rolling into the shadows.

"Please don't lose that," Nirvasana said with a perplexed look.

"I saw it before." Nyaya left the table, walking over to reclaim the coin. When she returned she placed it on the table and spun it, watching the jade flicker as if it were a sphere and not a disc. "Last night, when the spider... the _Anuhle_ ," she stressed the unfamiliar word, "Released Dhana to fight me, it spat this or something similar out of its mouth."

"It was likely this very coin, for it was found on the site of last night's incident." The lady sighed. "We suspected that it was Dhana's and from what you say it was most probably hidden in his clothes and the Anuhle bit into it." Nirvasana pointed to a slight indentation in the jade. Nyaya noticed that the woman had no difficulty with the word. Well, she had probably been educated for years to prepare her to serve the dowager princess. "Whether it was deliberate or accidental, it suggests that House Mnemon is dealing in adulterated obols. The possible consequences could be devastating."

"Why don't you assume that I'm just a simple tailor who doesn't know a great deal about politics? Why would they do such a thing?"

The lady-in-waiting studied her fingernails for a moment. "Two possibilities suggest themselves. Firstly, they may be seeking to inflate their coffers. Money is a weapon as effective in war as a spread-the-water knife in your hand - more so on occasions. House Mnemon's resources are impressive but there are ten other Great Houses and they cannot match the resources of all the others."

"Secondly, they could be trying to undermine our satrap's family. House Ragara are the wealthiest branch of the Scarlet Dynasty and they've thus far elected to remain neutral towards the major candidates - perhaps because they haven't found a suitable contender from their own ranks. If it could be convincingly argued that _they_ were adulterating currency it would gut them - quite the weapon to deploy if they elected to back one of Mnemon's rivals."

Nyaya nodded. "Of course, if Mnemon was caught with the coins, Ragara would turn on them. It seems a risk: what if someone else planted the coin to implicate Mnemon? It would probably drive a split between them, benefitting House Mnemon's rivals. This seems like asking who sent the demon after Dhana, there are so many possible suspects...?"

"You're very quick. It could be that the demon was sent by someone trying to sabotage the scheme, whatever it is. At least we can be sure now that Dhana did have the coin."

"Couldn't he be doing this on his own?"

"My dear woman." Nirvasana looked amused at the notion. "No Exalted dynast would ever allow one of their mortal kin enough authority to do something like this."

So now I have to add House Mnemon and House Ragara to the list of suspects, Nyaya thought. And you too, because you're up to something and I'm not sure how you expect to benefit from getting us further into this.

"So you think he was meeting someone in the lower city about this, taking the coin with him or receiving it from them if he was on his way back. And the Anuhle was sent to interfere?"

"Very probable. There is one further piece to the puzzle though."

"There's more?"

Nirvasana held up the obol. "The adulterations of the jade are distinctive. We've consulted Lalaca using a shaving from it - safe enough since others have been taken before - and he identified it as having been mined in a Shadowland or even the Underworld itself. House Mnemon are entangling themselves with the affairs of the dead."

 

E-X-A-L-T-E-D

 

Nyaya heard raised voices from inside the armoury although fortunately the thick walls meant that whatever was being discussed was impossible to make out. Hopefully it wasn't Kanuna throwing a fit about her absence.

 

Crossing the yard she opened the door as little as she could and slipped inside, closing it behind her.

 

"- HAVE TOLD YOU TWICE AND I WILL TELL YOU TEN THOUSAND TIMES NO!" roared the blue faced man leaning over the Constable's desk. "I DECLINE ABSOLUTELY TO SUMMON THE ANUHLE THAT ATTACKED DHANA. YOUR PATHETIC ATTEMPTS TO THREATEN ME WOULD BE INSULTING IF THEY WEREN'T SO LAUGHABLE!"

 

White-faced, Kanuna was leaning far back as the heavy chair would allow him. In sharp contrast, the other two occupants of the room were unmoved: the red-furred ape crouched behind the blue-faced man glanced over at her with a hungry look while Ghora was perched on a chair, arms folded.

 

"Perhaps, Master Lalaca," the small sorcerer suggested, "We could put a stop to this matter, which is after all a great embarrassment to your patron Prince Laxhander, if you were to explain the reasons, no doubt sound, that you cannot assist this investigation. I am sure that there is some learned reason that I'd benefit from your elucidation of."

 

So this was the Prince's sorcerer. Honestly, summoning the Anuhle and interrogating it - if that were possible - sounded like a profitable avenue to Nyaya.

 

Lalaca straightened. "I decline to share that information with this ignoramus."

 

"No offense, Prince of the Earth, but you're a sorcerer who had a recent argument with Dhana. We need to tell his family something or you'll be ducking their assassins for the next couple of decades."

 

"A valid point I suppose." The Dragonblood gestured to the door. "I will explain to you outside, so long as you merely vouch for the validity of my reasons. You, more than anyone, will know what I can do if word was to get out."

 

Ghora nodded but before they could exit, Kanuna interjected: "Wait, someone in the militia should be told. Someone more reliable than that foreigner."

 

"It may have escaped your attention," growled Lalaca, "But though I have served An Teng's princes since before your father was born, I am not native to An Teng either." He gestured towards the ape. "Do yourself the favour of not speaking again in my presence."

 

Followed by the ape - another demon, Nyaya suspected - Lalaca stalked out. Ghora shrugged in the direction of Kanuna and hopped off his chair, closing the door behind him.

 

Kanuna stared at the door and then straightened himself, glaring at Nyaya. "One simple request and he throws a fit," he grumbled. "Don't get the idea that I'll tolerate that sort of behaviour from the militia. If he wasn't Exalted..."

 

"With your permission, I'll get some rest, sir. This could be a long night." Lalaca hadn't paid her the least attention earlier, it was unlikely he'd care if she walked past his conversation now.

 

The Constable looked up from the desk and then nodded. "Yes yes. Just be ready to go if we get news of any incident. If nothing happens before midnight we'll head for the Immaculate Temple - Lalaca did confirm that demon summonings always culminate at that hour."

 

Nyaya opened the door and came face to face with the ape, which grabbed her shoulders with both powerful hands.

 

Screaming in surprise, she brought her knife up sharply. The curved blade, held by a grip along the back edge, was ideal for fighting in close quarters and the blade ripped a gash into the muscles across the stomach of the simian summoning.

 

With a roar of pain and anger, the ape crashed its head forward against her, sending her reeling backwards, only one hand still on the knife.

 

Someone was shouting, but she couldn't make out any words.

 

The knife slashed up into the wrist of the creature, as if someone else was guiding her hand, only to grate off the bones.

 

Then, with shocking force, she was loose and tumbling backwards into Kanuna's office, her vision obscured by flickering patterns of brilliant light.

 

Groping to piece together what had happened, she heard Lalaca bellow "YOU STUPID BASTARD! I just had that one trained! And I was supposed to leave for the City of the Steel Lotus tomorrow! Do you think I'm going to risk summoning a demon on a boat? This throws my entire schedule!"

 

"Cry me a river. Your demon was about to kill Nyaya."

 

Her vision began to clear and she saw the two sorcerers glaring at her.

 

"She should have known to barge into a private conversation."

 

"It's the only way out of that room," Ghora snorted. "Don't get on your high horse, you know the Satrap would be delighted to hammer you for a demon getting out of control and killing someone."

 

The Dragonblood narrowed his eyes. "I suppose that that's technically true. You still owe me for the inconvenience of that though. And I will call in that favour."

 

"I'm sure that you will."

 

Lalaca swept out and Ghora spat in the corner. "So much for an afternoon of meditation."

 

"Sorry?"

 

"Apology accepted. Next time think before you barge in on two sorcerers talking shop. Knock on the door or something. Now I'm almost tapped for essence, I owe the Dragonblood a favour and..."

 

"And?"

 

"The two of those aren't bad enough?" Ghora looked through the door at Kanuna. "Lalaca's reasons are sound. I'd not summon an Anuhle in his shoes but if we can get another Dragonblooded sorcerer we're probably okay to try it. Now I'm going back to Dhana's estate to meditate until it gets towards midnight. Try not to start any fights with demons or sorcerers before I get back."

 

E-X-A-L-T-E-D

 

I have to stop getting into fights with demons, Nyaya thought to herself. Great plan, except it's more than likely I'm resting up to prepare for another demon attacking Mnemon Dhana tonight.

 

Except it might be better for everyone if Dhana dies and whatever he's up to dies with him. If - and it's a big if - Lady Nirvasana can be trusted. Nobles like her always have an eye out for their advantage. If this is blackmail that could destroy a Great House then it's more than enough to bargain for the Prince's marriage... or to bring down the wrath of the Dragons upon us all. We've all too good an example of where that leads with the City of Dead Flowers to the south.

 

Her eyes snapped open. Once the shared capital of all of An Teng's principalities, the City of Dead Flowers was no a ghost-haunted ruin with rivers and canals diverted away from it. But it wasn't an abandoned ruin, not entirely. She'd spoken to priests of the Pale Mistress, responsible for placating and restraining the dead that sometimes strayed beyond it. The city was a Shadowland, partly of Creation and partly of the Underworld. It was possible to walk from the one to the other, using such a place as a gateway.

 

Possible?

 

All too easy!

 

It was possible that some smaller shadowland existed within Salt-Founded Glory, but if so she didn't know if it. Everyone knew of the City of Dead Flowers though. However House Mnemon had come into contact with the dead, it was most likely there. And if someone had sent the demon after Dhana because of these false coins then they could only have learned about it from House Mnemon, masters of intrigue, or from the Dead.

 

Why would the Dead betray the secret if they are going to prosper from the deal?

 

The answer is obvious: the Dead could easily be as factionalised as the living. Why would death stop them from pursuing their old feuds? But would they even be able to summon a demon? Ghora might know, but I think I've annoyed him more than a little this evening.

 

Should have thought twice about walking in on that conversation, Nyaya thought. Damn sorcerers. Still, Ghora stood up to Lalaca for me - decent of him. He's an odd sort though, cruel humour and yet behind that he banishes demons for the sake of people he doesn't care about. I wonder where he's from, that face paint doesn't look like anything I've ever seen before - perhaps it's customary in his homeland?

 

Homeland, I wonder if I can still call An Teng that for myself. The family house doesn't feel like the home I came back to find. Was I kidding myself to think I can pick up the threads of my life here?

 

Nyaya's eyes closed and a few moments later she began to snore.


	6. Ghora

Contrary to what he had told the militia, Ghora didn't go right to the Mnemon estate. That was a little too public for what he felt coming on.

 

No, for this he needed to be alone. His shack down on the docks was ideal - out of sight and out of mind for those who worked there - but it was too far away.

 

Ghora cut through the evening crowds, walking as fast as he could. A sorcerer running could set off a riot and while he probably wasn't well enough known for that, it would also draw more attention than he did already and that...

 

At one corner he abruptly turned left. The Temple of the Pale Mistress. It wasn't ideal, but it was as close as -

 

\- his heart hammered violently and he almost choked as a gout of blood surged up his throat and into his mouth -

 

\- close enough, hopefully.

 

Gulping back as much of the blood as he could, the little sorcerer broke into a run, relying on the red and black tattoos and face-paint to disguise the trickles that escaped from between his lips.

 

This is what you get for helping someone, he thought. This is my punishment for caring.

 

The Pale Mistress was a goddess more feared than loved by An Teng. Her temple was visited, for the most part, by those wanting to avert her attention from them. The streets around it had never been popular dwellings for anyone who could arrange to live out of sight of the ebony pagoda with the white silk rags at every window.

 

Thus, Ghora stumbled through the slums, now leaning against walls when he could, until he found a twisting alley leading into the shadows behind the temple. It would have to do.

 

Blood trickled down his forehead into his eyes as he dropped to his knees and scrambled behind a broken barrel.

 

Hood thrown back, curled in a foetal position, The Unbridled Stallion of Oblivion clenched his teeth and tried to restrain the wail of agony fighting to escape his lips as black fire crawled along his nerves. The already weeping scar upon his brow gave way entirely and where the blood crossed his face, face paint and even the ink beneath was washed away in favour of the ichor.

 

He could not have said how long he lay there, but when cold rain brought Ghora back to his senses the sky was fully dark, stars and moon hidden behind the clouds. Water had pooled beneath him and frozen to ice, trapping his robe against the alley's filthy cobbles.

 

Ice, this far south? The will of Whose Whispers Chain was cruel by its very nature, but also twisted. It had never been clear to Ghora if the ice had some deeper significance or if the ancient being simply found his reaction the first time it happened - he'd never seen ice before - amusing.

 

With a sigh he wriggled to brace himself and then started bringing his sandals and his elbows down upon the ice, aware that it made him look very much like a child throwing a tantrum but short of leaving the robe behind it was his only real option.

 

Most of the ice was loose and Ghora had managed to rise to a crouch by the time he heard footsteps on the cobbles. Two sets... no, three. One lighter than the others.

 

Perhaps they were charitable souls coming to help a poor fellow who'd fallen in this alley?

 

And maybe chickens could be made to quack. It was possible, but not how Ghora's luck generally went.

 

One large man carrying a lantern, a second even larger man and a woman whose wizened face had something of the look of a ferret to her. Possibly he was reading too much into their appearances...

 

"See, I told you there was a Djala down here!" the woman declared with a degree of vindication.

 

...oh camel-dung.

 

Ghora ran one finger down his face and confirmed the lack of disguising face-paint.

 

"Just hold it right there, little fellow," the smaller of the two men said, gesturing to his companion. "My friend Peshi will get you loose and then we'll find a nice warm home for you."

 

"Somehow I don't trust your intentions," replied Ghora, eyeing the cudgel that the larger man held. "And if you bring that thing near me I'll shove it up your ass."

 

"Now that just ain't nice. I guess we'll need to teach you some manners before we sell you off."

 

"Don't get too rough," the woman warned. "That'll damage his price."

 

"Don't worry your head. Face like that, no one will notice a couple of black eyes."

 

With a jerk, Ghora finally broke himself loose from the last of the ice. "I suppose I'd just be wasting my breath, warning you that I'm a powerful sorcerer?"

 

"What you are is thirty, maybe forty koku in the pocket once we get you to a slave dealer that knows not to ask unfortunate questions. Peshi, get a hold of him."

 

"I'm feeling generous, so I'll give you one last chance. Walk away or I will end you." The circle on Ghora's brow began to seep blood once more. "My oath to the abyss upon it."

 

Peshi, the towering man, was probably not the brightest of the three but it seemed that he had a certain animal recognition of danger because he hesitated. "Boss?"

 

"Do it!" shouted the woman.

 

But it was Ghora who in fact 'did it'. From his crouch he came up like a bounding tiger and his thumbs were aimed for Peshi's eyes. The cudgel swinging through the air was not barrier, instead he used it as a stepping stone and the big man screamed as flesh and bone penetrated the soft tissues of his eyes.

 

There was a second scream, this time from the woman as the leader of the little group put discretion over valour or loyalty and shoved her forwards as a sacrifice while he bolted for the mouth of the alleyway. To her relieved surprise all that hit her was Ghora's foot as he somersaulted over Peshi's head and bounced onwards, kicking against the back of her head to send her stumbling against the wall of the nearest building and to give the sorcerer a hair more acceleration towards his target.

 

He landed upon his would-be enslaver's back and bared a mouth full of needle-sharp incisors. Closing them around the side of the man's neck Ghora bit down and for the second time in the evening his face was bathed in blood.

 

"Oh don't scream," he snarled at the woman as she looked up and inhaled in preparation to do so. "I warned you twice that you were making the last mistake of your lives."

 

Then he lowered his head and sucked upon the lifeblood flowing out of the first of his - no use denying it, even to himself - victims.

 

E-X-A-L-T-E-D

 

It had been months, almost half a year in fact, since Ghora had done this. Not out of any particular moral scruple - if he was going to kill someone anyway, he might as well get as much benefit from the act as he could, in his opinion. But there'd been relatively little need to kill since arriving in Salt-Founded Glory and the one occasion when he had, the circumstances had been public enough that it would have been counter-productive.

 

(He'd needed to establish a certain reputation in order to establish himself on the dockside, but drinking the blood of the dead would have been entirely the wrong image.)

 

But the act was not only empowering him as efficiently as hours of meditation in Dhana's manse (although admittedly given its mediocre geomancy and inferior construction in compared to the greater manses he had found in the Underworld that wasn't saying much), it was also reminding him of the powers that had once been at his command, powers that could be his again if he had the essence.

 

If there was an agent of the dead - worse, it could be a fully-fledged death-knight - then he might well need those powers. If the price was giving up his life here... well, what price a lie?

 

The lantern had miraculously not gone out when Peshi fell and Ghora used its light and a puddle of water as an improvised mirror, spreading blood across his face and mixing in mud to replicate his usual disguise. When tonight was done with... well, there were decision to be made.

 

Midnight was nearing and he had an ample reserve of essence at his disposal, more than he'd had for months.

 

Tempting as it was to leave the bodies in the alley, someone ought to see that they were buried properly. One by one he dragged them to the mouth of the alleyway, ignoring the watchful eyes of the Bloody Hand on the rooftop. Gods of murder cared not who killed whom and the price for their sharing the information was not usually one that enforcers of laws were inclined to pay.

 

Given the part of town they were in, most likely no one would care beyond making sure that no hungry ghosts rose to cause harm.

 

With the essence flowing through him it was tempting to ignore obstacles, leaping walls or taking to the rooftops rather than going around buildings but he restrained himself. Make too great a display and certain assumptions, not entirely unfounded, might be made about him.

 

As it was the muddy streets flashed by beneath his feet. There were occasional islands of light from cheap lanterns in shabby taverns and brothels, bright mirrors and ancient light crystals from mansions where festivities could last until first light. More commonly though, the streets were dark - respectable people weren't out this late.

Respectable people, apparently didn't include the Immaculate Temple, where armoured monks stood watch at the gates and walls.

Ghora recognised the elderly pair from earlier standing at the foot of the stairs that led up to the gate. "Let me guess, it looked like so much fun for the youngster earlier that you wanted to take a turn?"

"Something like that. Have you been demonically possessed since we last saw you?"

Something like that. "Just re-painted my face."

"I was wondering about that," agreed the woman. "Does it have any particular significance?"

"War paint. I am now spiritually prepared to kill."

"It looks like it," the other monk conceded. "Just don't try to kill Mnemon Dhana or one of us will have to clean your face paint off our fists."

"Why that would just be inconsiderate," Ghora protested and hastened up the steps.

Inside the temple, lanterns were spitting and hissing. The scent reminded him of something but he couldn't place it precisely. No doubt it had some property that the monks felt was desirable under these circumstances.

The infirmary had more monks deployed around it, shaven-headed men and women with belts to identify their higher initiation to anyone that could recognize it in their stances and the calluses of their hands. What the building lacked, however, was Mnemon Dhana.

Ghora looked at the man lying in the bed, wearing a heavy robe in the colours of House Mnemon around his shoulder. "Do you want me to cut your leg off to make you a more convincing imitation?"

"No, that's alright. I might be a better imposter but I'd be less able to battle assassins."

"A valid point," agreed the sorcerer. "I don't suppose you could tell me where he really is?"

"That would rather undermine the point of my being a decoy, wouldn't you say?"

Ghora conceded the point and left the room. Okay, so I'm trying to protect Dhana - at least until I have some idea what's going on - but I don't know where he is. Good start.

Leaving the infirmary he looked at the monks again. While it appeared that the monks were primarily positioned to protect the infirmary, if Dhana was still in the temple then at least some of them should be aware of the actual location and be positioned to protect that. Not there, not there...

Turning decisively towards the kitchens he went through them without breaking stride at the protests of the monk working there. Most of the food there was the usual fare of Immaculate monks - simple rice, tea, white meats for the lower coils of initiation. Some of the food was more typical of that eaten by dynasts - a rich curry with plenty of meat. Well Dhana was almost certainly still in the temple then.

On the other side of the kitchens was the main hall, where the junior monks ate, trained and slept. At the moment it was bare, an echoing pentagonal chamber with a series of slightly smaller floors above it for more private quarters, offices and other purposes.

When Ghora approached the stairs he was intercepted by a towering monk who appeared to have a small mountain somewhere in his ancestry. If he was Exalted then it would almost have to be Pasiap that had chosen him, but Ghora suspected that this was not a Dragonblood.

"Is there something that we can do for you, master sorcerer?"

"Well the militia asked me to help protect Mnemon Dhana so if you can't point me towards him, could you at least direct me to Constable Kunana?"

The monk looked down at Ghora and then nodded. "The Constable is meeting with the Abbot. Please follow me."

 

E-X-A-L-T-E-D

 

The Abbot's office overlooked the main gates and other than a well-stuffed writing desk it looked much like the other rooms in the temple.

Knelt around the table were Kanuna, Nyaya and the Abbot - a short, broad built man who had a strung bow on the floor next to him and a quiver of arrows beside him.

"You're late," the Constable grumbled.

"Has Dhana been attacked and nobody told me?"

"No," Nyaya told him with a glance towards the door that Ghora guessed led into the Abbot's private quarters.

"Then I'm not late."

The Abbot bowed slightly. "And you would be?"

"This is Ghora," explained Kanuna and then added deliberately: "The mortal who practices sorcery."

"Ah. Presumptuous of you," the monk observed. "If the Dragons made you mortal then your soul may not be ready for such arts."

"If my soul was unready then the trials of sorcery would have long since destroyed me." Ghora sat himself down uninvited. "I take it that the concealment of Mnemon Dhana's location is in case a more conventional assassination attempt is made?"

"They'd be fools to try," the abbot assured him. "However, as we know of no other sorcerers in the area it is likely that we are dealing with fools who summoned the Anuhle via thaumaturgy."

"None of the usual signs of that?"

"A pile of the corpses of the summoners? Not that anyone's reported."

"That would be a relief - if we knew that whoever was behind this was dead, at least they'd be unlikely to try this again," Ghora said and noticed Nyaya shift uneasily. What did she know? he wondered. And has she shared it with the Constable? "That leaves the possibilities as a sorcerer that no one knows of - possibly a good distance away from Salt-Founded Glory - or of a thaumaturge that's not only summoned a demon but that successfully made a pact with them."

"What could a mortal offer a demon?" asked Kanuna.

"Quite a range of things unfortunately. Demons have their desires, some innocuous but others that are better left unsated."

Ghora would have expanded upon this but at that point a cry went up from outside.

All four of them rushed to the window, which was fortunately large enough for all of them at once. Below, monks were running to confront the graceful white stag that was stood in the gates. As it moved parts of the stag shifted in and out of view and Ghora realised that it was only visible when he looked at it through the smoke from the lanterns.

"Useful lanterns," he observed.

"It's an expensive oil to burn," the Abbot told him absently as he reached back and started rifling through the arrows. "Dhana nearly had a fit when we told him how much it would cost to use just for tonight."

"Is it a demon?" Kanuna asked nervously, his own weapon in hand even though the stag was fifty yards away and several more yards below.

Ghora stared down at where the stag was moving forwards, now lowering its horns aggressively towards the monks. "I've never seen one before, I think that that's a Luminata."

"I hope you're wrong," the abbot muttered. He nocked an arrow. "They're vulnerable to oak, ash and rowan as I recall."

"And none of those three are common around here," Nyaya observed. She stepped back from the window. "I'd better keep an eye on Dhana."

"I'll, er, join you," agreed Kanuna nervously.

 

"You do that," agreed Ghora.

The abbot loosed his arrow and the stag skipped sideways. Ghora squinted and saw the flesh of the deer shift unnaturally. "...yes, it's a Luminata."

With a swipe of its heads the tendrils of white flesh that passed for antlers from a distance intercepted one of the monks. The unfortunate woman screamed as flesh and bone parted like paper cut by a sharp knife.

"Don't bother," Ghora ordered abruptly as the Abbot nocked a second arrow. "Unless it's the right wood you're wasting your time. See if you have any stored - I'll try to buy you time."

"Can't you just banish it?" asked Kanuna suspiciously from the door into the Abbot's quarters.

The sorcerer cracked his knuckles. "That might make it hard to get information out of it. You do want to find out who's summoning them, don't you?"

Without waiting for an answer he scrambled over the window sill and gingerly trotted down the curved slope of tiles to the edge of the roof.

Two more monks closed in, wielding long heavy clubs. Ghora couldn't fault their courage but the most that could be said for their clubs was that when the Luminata burst forth a flood of white tentacles, one of the monks managed to escape by throwing his weapon at them demon and fleeing. The other's half-eaten corpse fell to the gravel as the demon returned to its stag-like shape and broke into a gallop away from the smoke.

Leaning down over the roof, Ghora snagged the lantern that hung there and darted along the edge of the roof, aiming to intercept the demon before it could get around the corner. He didn't quite make it and realised almost too late that in his haste to pursue he couldn't stop himself short of the edge.

Instead he kicked off and essence bore him off into the air but at an angle that followed his prey. Whipping his arm around he hurled the lantern and was pleased to see the wire and paper crash against the demon's back, burning oil spreading along the tendrils and causing it to bleat in pain.

Then a wall got in the way of his arc and he clung to it, hands smarting at the impact, for a moment before sliding down it to the ground. If he'd caught himself just an inch or so later, he'd have looked really stupid, he realised. Moe importantly, he'd lost track of the demon.

Fortunately, the scent of burning Luminata flesh was distinctive enough to follow and he followed it to the entrance to the infirmary where a cluster of monks with bows were, if not hitting the fleet-footed creature then at least keeping it from entering the building. The burning oil was continuing to force it to remain materialised and therefore vulnerable. Ghora doubted the arrows were of the right wood to harm the Luminata but the creature couldn't be sure of that.

"You can't succeed," he called to it in the ancient tongue. "Your summoner has sent you into a trap."

One of the monks' arrows whistled past his ear and he shot a glare at the woman.

"Tell me who sent you and I will banish you back to Malfeas," he called out.

The Luminata hissed and lunged at him. "Why would I want that, when there is succulent man-flesh here?" it asked when he dodged aside, producing a scalpel from his sleeve. While he would prefer not to show any of his tools to the monks, unlike the other one they would be unlikely to covet the shard of soulsteel that was the core of this one. Try to kill him for owning such a tool, perhaps, but not to take it from him for their own use.

"In Malfeas there is the hope that you may escape once more to enter this world," Ghora bargained. "Deny me and I shall not send you back, I shall slay you here and you shall never taste the flesh of men again."

"Little mortal, you have not the wood that burns me."

"I've got worse than that." He flicked his fingers and let it see the dark gleam of the soulsteel.

With the demon distracted, the monks loosed three more arrows and a fourth flung a chakram at where it had dodged to. When it stepped aside, the weapon hurtled past it and towards Ghora's face and he had to twist aside and then jump back when the Luminata made another attempt to take a bite out of him.

He riposted and the tip of the scalpel barely missed one tentacle.

"Grant me the body of one already slain and I shall answer your question," the deer-like demon proposed, greed glittering in its baleful eyes.

Under other circumstances, Ghora might have agreed. There were dead enough already and they would have no need for their bodies any more, but he doubted that the monks would see it that way. He considered for a moment taking the Luminata to the three he'd killed earlier, but getting the man-eating demon through the streets without causing more fatalities would be practically impossible. "My last offer was final. Death or banishment, make your choice."

"Do your worst," the Luminata hissed, eyes upon the scalpel in Ghora's hand.

Then an arrow lanced into its back and the demon howled as the flesh blistered around the wound.

Taking the opportunity, Ghora lunched forwards and slashed along one 'leg', opening wounds on three of the writhing tentacles. Ichor spilled from leg and as it tried to grasp him he rolled aside and saw the Abbot standing at the entrance to the kitchens, nocking a second arrow.

He must have found some suitable arrows, Ghora thought. "You're not mortal," he taunted the demon. "The monks you have slain will be reborn into new lives but for you, this will be the final end."

The Luminata tried to dodge the second arrow but the arrow pierced one leg and it fell to the ground as the flesh smoked and scorched. With deadly precise timing, the surgeon seized one horn and before the demon could think to use the tentacles upon him, he'd severed them with a back-handed slice of the blade in his hand.

The edges had been sharp enough to draw a trickle of blood from his hand and Ghora flicked it away, droplets landing before his foe.

"Wait, I agree!" the Luminata squealed, eyes upon the fallen blood. "I agree!"

Ghora watched the cut on his hand close and then smiled coldly. "The name? Too little, too late!"

 

"Not my summoner's name, my accomplice's!" The demon lashed out with a tentacle and sucked away the blood on the ground. "Did you think I came here alone!?"

Eyes wide with anger, the little man darted forwards and the scalpel stabbed twice. Each time one of the eyes of the demon was pierced. "I've blinded it!" he called to the monks. "Finish it with arrows!"

Leaving it to them he turned back to the main building. A decoy! A demon summoned as nothing but a diversion! That was no petty use of resources.

The young monk from before tried to stop him, but Ghora ducked below his hand, hooked one foot around the towering monk's ankle and laid him out without slowing - although he did have the time to throw an apology over his shoulder.

Sliding the door to the Abbot's quarters open with a crash, Ghora took in the scene with a glance.

Nyaya crumpled in the corner, a goose-egg bruise on her brow.

A decaying corpse sprawled across the floor, head severed from its neck saving for a thin strip of flesh - and that was only the most severe of its wounds yet by all appearances the man seemed as if he should have been buried or cremated a month ago.

And lying on the bedroll, Mnemon Dhana, Nyaya's spread-the-water knife buried deep in his chest, undoubtedly piercing the heart.


	7. Nyaya

Nyaya was watching the window of the Abbot's quarters when the door was kicked in and it took her a moment for re-orientate herself.

 

The figure that entered the room was pale and gaunt, with glaring green eyes, and wore only a loincloth. For a moment she thought that it was one of the Pale Mistress' kaleyi, capering horrors that followed the ghastly goddess.

 

The same thought must have crossed Kanuna's mind but he sidestepped the door panel as it fell to the ground and brought his spread-the-water knife up in a textbook block that caught the intruder's weapon - a short, heavy blade of a kind that Nyaya had heard seamen call a cutlass and up-country woodsmen a machete - and deflected it to one side. With a surge of horror Nyaya recognised the stringy muscle and parchment stiff skin of the attacker as that of a several days dead corpse.

 

She wasn't sure if Kanuna had ever been in a serious fight before - one where his life hung in the balance - but she knew he was at least diligent about training. All the part-time militia drilled with the knife in the morning or evening before their duty and Kanuna, as Constable, led every drill. The man brought the lower points up and when his assailant twisted to avoid that, he pressed forwards.

 

That was the right thing to do according to the scrolls: it moved the attacker back from the door and let Kanuna control the access. The scrolls, apparently didn't consider the advantages of having someone help, since in doing so he was also blocking Nyaya from helping him.

 

She didn't see exactly what happened next, but the spread-the-water knife seemed to stick in something and while Kanuna jerked it, once in the rigid formality of his training and then again in a more agitated fashion, long fingers clamped upon his throat.

 

"What is that?" Dhana called from the bed, reaching for the short sword - a legion thrusting blade.

 

Grabbing her superior by the shoulder, Nyaya yanked him back - she could only manage a few inches - and stabbed under arm past him and into the belly of the kaleyi or whatever it was. In a human that would have unleashed a flood of gore and most likely have been a mortal wound, if not necessarily one that was immediately fatal.

 

This... being... oozed a little from the wound and didn't slow down even slightly.

 

Kanuma choked out something incomprehensible.

 

Reversing her knife, Nyaya stabbed up over his shoulder and caught it in the throat, just below the mask.

 

Flesh parted and the mask turned to face her. It didn't stop the hand from clenching tighter around Kanuna's throat, knuckles greying (one could hardly call it whitening). The Constable's knees slackened and the corpse-like man pushed him back and down, jerking a knee up and into his groin, abruptly breaking off his attempts to claw away the hand from his throat.

 

"Let go of him!" Nyaya cried and drawing back the spread-the-water knife she stabbed it in again, not stopping until she felt the blade grinding against the bones of the spine. Furiously she sawed until the blade found a gap between them and then drove it again, twisting upon half the neck was torn open.

 

Kanuna crumpled completely and now she could see his knife was hooked upon the ribs of the intruder. Could it even die?

 

But if followed him down, sprawling over the Constable, head at an obscene angle, still strangling him.

 

Nyaya drew back the spread-the-water knife, braced herself and swung hard.

 

There was a thunk sound and the neck of the creature broke. The head crashed down upon fallen Constable's and then, to her great relief, the cutlass slipped from its fingers and her opponent went limp upon Kanuna.

 

"Did you get him?" asked Dhana.

 

With a great sigh, Nyaya lowered her spread-the-water knife and then, cautiously, brought it around in stabbing motion against its left side. The weapon's blade sunk in deeply between the ribs, right on target for the heart. "I think so."

 

"Are you alright?" she asked Kanuna.

 

He gurgled, no more in motion than the... corpse? ...that lay upon him. Sighing again, Nyaya dropped her weapon and grasped the body, rolling it over. The flesh beneath her hands was soft and yielding, almost rotten beneath the skin. "How did this even put up a fight?" She pulled loose Kanuna's knife from it and set it aside before dragging the corpse completely off her superior. The mask, she realised, was intricately engraved with a motif of lions and herons.

 

With a gasp, Kanuna took a deep breath and pushed himself up on his elbows.

 

"Nothing broken?" Nyaya offered her hand to help him up.

 

He accepted her hand, wrapped his other hand around her shoulder and then his eyes snapped open.

 

Green, glowing eyes.

 

With a powerful surge, Kanuna yanked her down and her head crashed against floor.

 

E-X-A-L-T-E-D

 

When she woke up, head throbbing, Nyaya thought at first that she was laid out on her bedroll but then she realised that it was too cold to be in house.

 

She tried to roll over and a firm hand caught hold of her. "Not that direction. It's a long way down."

 

"What? Ghora?" She shook her head and then sat up. "Kanuna! He's -"

 

"Missing." Ghora was sitting crosslegged on...

 

Nyaya swallowed.

 

...on the same cloud that she was laid out upon.

 

"Where are we!?"

 

The sorcerer helped her to sit up. "It's called the Cirrus Skiff. Not the fastest way for a sorcerer to travel but it has the advantage of being hard to find against a cloudy sky like this." The sun was in the sky, still below the height of the cloud cover to the east. "We're in a mess of trouble."

 

"Kanuna, he knocked me out."

 

"Oh?" Ghora nodded. "I thought it might be something like that. Tell me everything."

 

"Not until you tell me why you've dragged me off here!"

 

He smirked and she saw that the red had run off his face, leaving patches of black around his eyes. "I thought it might be easier to talk up here than it would be in the Militia's cells. You're accused of murdering Mnemon Dhana."

 

"What!? That's outrageous, I never - !"

 

"He was killed with your weapon, while under the protection of the Immaculate Order. if the monks call it an inside job, by a traitor among the Militia, then they can spread some of the blame away from themselves. Besides you're the only living target, so you're an easy scapegoat."

 

"Particularly if I've run away! That just makes me look more guilty!"

 

"That's true. But your only hope right now is proving not just your own innocence, but someone else's guilt. Good luck doing that from a cell."

 

Nyaya screamed in aggravation and then again in a more subdued tone as her head protested. "For a very irritating little man, you're ten times as irritating when you're right."

 

"It's not as if it's an unusual occurance," he protested. "So what happened?"

 

Grudgingly she recited the brief battle and then elaborated on details when he asked questions. Ghora seemed particularly interested in the mask.

 

"So what's so special about it?" she asked him curiously.

 

"Masks like that are a hallmark of a particular breed - or perhaps you might say, trade - amongst ghosts," he replied. "And the markings indicate an allegiance - I'd expect an assassin to be more anonymous though."

 

"So either it's intended to cast false suspicion on the person whose livery they're wearing, or it's a statement by that person that they want to be associated with the ghost's actions?"

 

Ghora nodded. "Politics is no less complicated for the dead than the living. More complicated, often, since you have era after era heaped upon each other. You Tengese might consult your ancestors for support, but I doubt you're aware how much older and wiser ghosts compete with younger but better remembered ghosts for the attention of the living."

 

"You seem to know a lot about it," Nyaya asked suspiciously.

 

"I made a living as an exorcist, years ago amongst the Varangians. It's one of those trades they prefer to leave to foreigners and it's what got me involved in the occult community." He shrugged. "One thing led to another and I ended up apprenticed to a sorcerer who thought I had potential."

 

"It sounds like a lucky break."

 

"Well, that all hangs on what he thought that I had potential for, doesn't it?"

 

"Wait, you're not Varangian and you're certainly not Tengese..." Nyaya squinted at him suspiciously and then took a deep breath. "I don't believe I didn't spot this before! You're a Djala!"

 

His eyes glittered dangerously. "What of it?"

 

"Nothing, nothing. I'd just been wondering is all. Why the great pretense?"

 

"How many of my people have you come across that weren't slaves?"

 

"Not many," she conceded. "So it's to protect your reputation as a mysterious sorcerer."

 

"There's a degree of showmanship, yes. It's hard enough to be taken seriously when you're all of four feet tall. Being associated with an exotic race most often found as the slaves of the wealthy doesn't help." He laughed shortly. "Maybe I should go back to my people someday and take some apprentices of my own. I'd like to see the slaver's faces if they had to fight through an army of elementals to get at a Djala village."

 

"Not demons? Oh, yes. You said earlier that that would be too dangerous."

 

"Even Exalted are wise not to summon demons anywhere near their own families. But we're getting away from the point: the Constable's body is possessed by a powerful ghost."

 

"Is he dead?"

 

Ghora tilted his hand back and forth. "Could be either way. They can possess the living but I gather that it's easier to work with a dead body. Of course, that might mean that even if Kanuna was alive when he was taken that he could easily have been killed since."

 

"Well there's a comforting thought." A thought struck Nyaya. "Could the ghost be the sorcerer?"

 

"I wouldn't have thought so. Even the ghost of a sorcerer can't generally use the art after death. That doesn't necessarily rule out summoning by other means, but it's more likely that the nemissary - that's the type of ghost we're dealing with - is working with a living accomplice who summoned the demon."

 

"Great. I hope you can deal with them - actually, why are you helping me anyway?"

 

"Aside from the high degree of suspicion that I'm an accomplice in whatever nefarious scheme you're involved in that required the murder of Mnemon Dhana?"

 

"I don't have a nefarious scheme!?"

 

"They don't know that," Ghora reminded her. "Besides, this isn't the first time the Dead have involved themselves in this matter. The dynast had a token of Stygian jade that he lost during the attack, I suspect to verify his identity to whoever he was meeting with that night."

 

"Yes, I saw it."

 

The sorcerer eyed her thoughtfully. "Did you really?"

 

Nyaya nodded. "Lady Nirvasana showed it to me. She suggested that it might be part of some sort of complex scheme to adulterate the currency of the Realm."

 

Ghora rubbed his face. "I suppose it's possible but I doubt that Mnemon would take the risk of forging an alliance among the Dead for a mere momentary advantage. If she's risking her entire House then she'd almost certainly be aiming for something grander. I'm at something of a loss what she could want from them here in An Teng though."

 

"And even if we do find out what House Mnemon are up to, how does it help us?"

 

"Two ways that I can see. Firstly, it's possible we can blackmail them with it into leaving us alone despite the death of Dhana. Not ideal - they'd no doubt want to silence us, but it would at least block them from any obvious measures. More usefully, the only motive I can see to kill Dhana is to stop whatever he was up to. If we can find out what faction he was dealing with, we can perhaps confirm which faction it was that killed him."

 

"So either the lion and heron people or someone wanting to frame them."

 

"More than likely." Ghora eyed the sky. "We should reach our destination before very much longer."

 

Nyaya nodded and then paused. "Two questions."

 

"Go ahead."

 

"Firstly, where are we going?"

 

"The only place we're likely to be able to learn anything from the dead: the City of Dead Flowers."

 

"Oh wonderful. I don't make a habit of jumping headlong into Shadowlands, you know."

 

Ghora grinned. "It's not as bad as its reputation makes out." He paused. "Worse, probably."

 

"And me without a weapon." Nyaya touched her forehead and winced as her fingers found the bruise.

 

"And what's your other question?"

 

"Whose livery was the nemissary wearing?"

 

"There are ghosts so evil, so wicked, so seductive, they have risen above all others. Some say that their fates are bound to dark powers that lurk even beneath the bones of the Underworld. Others believe that in life they were the children of the Anathema - or even Anathema themselves. You may know them as the Deathlords."

 

Nyaya took a deep breath, held it and then exhaled slowly. Her heart ceased to race and beat steadily. "Death comes to us all, Ghora."

 

"When these ghosts are involved, death brings chains."

 

E-X-A-L-T-E-D

 

While three or four days travel away by boat, Nyaya wasn't surprised to find that Ghora was right about their arriving at the City of Dead Flowers before the Sun had entirely disappeared behind the clouds.

 

She didn't get the impression that the clouds over the city would part at any time that day. It was that sort of place.

 

The cloud that they were riding on dissipated once Ghora scrambled off it. "Is that a difficult spell?" she asked him.

 

"It's one of the three most common transportation spells. If you're asking 'can I use it to go back to Salt-Founded Glory?' then probably. It depends how tired I am, but it's not that demanding a spell."

 

"That's a relief. Because getting out of here in a hurry matters to me. A lot."

 

More than a thousand years of neglect had done nothing good to the once noble city. Canals were clogged and towers had fallen. Trees grew over what had once been avenues - trees not tall and majestic but crooked and wizened.

 

Little of this seemed to matter to the dwellers of the city, who occupied both the ruins and also improvised shacks amid them. There were several dozen in view, as Ghora hadn't been particularly subtle about landing them on the roof of one of the still standing buildings.

 

"So do you have a plan?"

 

Ghora glanced around and appeared to dismiss the populace of the city from consideration. "I have two plans," he advised her. "The first plan is to play bait: whoever killed Mnemon Dhana knows that we are seeking them and will soon know we are here. It's likely they'll try to eliminate us, which means we can begin to trace their agents."

 

"Thus the rather public arrival. I do see a couple of problems with the plan: how do we know that anyone bothering us works for our targets?"

 

"I just outted myself as a sorcerer to everyone in view: would you trouble a sorcerer without good reason?"

 

"I suppose that that makes sense," she conceded. "But I'm also unarmed."

 

"Good point. Well, we can do something about that. My other plan will have to wait until sunset anyway."

 

"What plan is that?"

 

Ghora smiled broadly and bared his teeth. "I'm going to ask Mnemon Dhana some questions and this time he is going to give me the answers."

 

"Isn't he dead?"

 

"So are about half the people here. Believe me, that isn't going to be a problem."

 

E-X-A-L-T-E-D

 

It took a while for Nyaya to determine that the City of Dead Flowers reminded her more of Chiaroscuro than of any of the other great cities she'd visited. The rich (ghosts) lived in the older buildings with more luxuries and the poor (in this case the living) lived in shanty towns around them.

 

"Maybe I can buy a weapon at that market," she suggested, pointing down one of the once broad avenues that they were cutting across. A once grand square further along it had been cut down to less than a third of it's original size by the collapse of buildings along two sides, but what was left was marked out with crude stalls.

 

"I doubt you can afford one," Ghora replied. "I'm not saying they won't take Realm script - although they might not - but they'll mark it up sharply and guild silver isn't much better."

 

Nyaya gave the little man an irritated look. "Then where am I going to get a weapon from? I haven't even seen a tree branch that I'd trust as a cudgel."

 

In answer, Ghora pointed ahead at the slumped, partially collapsed shape of a pyramid that dominated the centre of the city. "Whoever lives there will probably have weapons. People who're in charge or want to be in charge almost always have minions with weapons."

 

"Weapons that, just possibly, they might use on us?"

 

He smirked. "Giving them to us point first? It's possible, but I hope to avoid that." The street was blocked ahead by rubble but he climbed it easily, no more impeded than the larger Nyaya - perhaps less. "What I have in mind is that whoever occupies that Manse - because that's what it is, and not a small one either - will be more aware of the local politics than I am. But I can probably bluff some information out of them."

 

"That sounds dangerous," warned Nyaya.

 

"It is. I'm going to pretend that I'm one of the Deathlord's living servants, a deathknight. They're rare but also powerful. If I can pull it off then it's unlikely any ghost, even a Nemissary, will want to oppose me."

 

Nyaya nodded. "It's reckless, but I suppose they're not the sort of people that someone would usually dare to impersonate?"

 

"It wouldn't be wise, no. But they're among the few inhabitants of the Underworld that can practise sorcery. Between that and the right trappings..." Ghora paused, turned back and traced a circle on his forehead. "Don't be surprised if I appear to have a bleeding circle - or even a burnt black one - on my forehead. The deathknights all have such marks."

 

"They sound more like the marks of the Anathema," Nyaya observed uneasily.

 

"I'm not sure if it's a conscious imitation," he admitted. "There may be a deeper connection. I can use my sorcery to imitate it. If anyone asks, I’m the Unbridled Stallion of Oblivion."

 

The woman laughed out loud and he threw up his hands. "I know, I know. But they take such titles seriously. If I sound impressive and act impressive, they’ll assume that I _am_ impressive. So get that laughter out of your system. The Unbridled Stallion of Oblivion wouldn’t tolerate such levity in a lackey."

 

"Lackey?"

 

"Look, we have to work with what we have. Just keep your eye out for a nice weapon and if anyone asks, act like you’re scared to discuss anything without my permission."


	8. Ghora

The Unbridled Stallion of Oblivion, trailed by a lackey, strode into the manse although he owned the place.

 

It had been a grand palace once, he thought. Flowers on the terraces, lordly Princes of the Earth holding court in the great halls. Essence had flowed through it for their benefit.

 

And then someone appeared to have fought their way in with high-essence weaponry and for all he could tell, a small legion of warstriders. One side had completely caved in, which given the monolithic construction of the place suggested some truly gratuitous destruction of load-bearing walls inside.

 

He privately shuddered at what that must have done to the dragon-lines through the Manse. They were lucky they hadn't had a catastrophic discharge - then again, that might explain the odd truncation of the top two levels...

 

The stairs on the west side, rising half the original height of the pyramid before reaching a grand door (one of what had been two) were largely undamaged at least in comparison to their mirror image to the east.

 

"Who disturbs the peace of my master's manse?" demanded a man in white funerary robes beneath armour that marked him as part of a noble's bodyguard. The armour and the spread-the-water knife he held were better defined than his face, which had a disturbing vagueness if you looked at it too closely.

 

Most ghosts had trouble remembering what their faces looked like in life.

 

"Tell your master that the Unbridled Stallion of Oblivion has arrived."

 

"Ah. Are you expected?"

 

"Never."

 

The ghost looked surprised and then shrugged. "But not unannounced."

 

"Do so, then." The Unbridled Stallion of Oblivion let his essence flow slightly and saw empty eyes flicker to study his brow where his caste mark was no doubt glowing darkly.

 

"Of course, Lord Stallion. Would you care for refreshments while I alert the master."

 

Nyaya's stomach gurgled at the thought.

 

"Lackey..." growled the Unbridled Stallion of Oblivion as the woman paled. "When did you last eat?"

 

"Yesterday. A little."

 

The deathknight and the ghost exchanged a look that spoke volumes about mortal foibles.

 

"The servants will provide, sir." The armoured ghost struck one gauntleted fist against a small gong suspended from the ceiling and while the sound was still echoing, he gestured to the side-door of the hall nearest to the wall. "Please accept the hospitality of this guest room while I notify the master."

 

The Unbridled Stallion of Oblivion made an acquiescent gesture and stepped through the door to find a stark room with one window looking down on the city, benches at the walls and a long wooden table with high-backed chairs along both sides. "How very comfortable."

 

The ghost bowed his head, apparently oblivious to the sarcasm and withdrew.

 

Waving Nyaya towards the benches, the Unbridled Stallion of Oblivion himself went to the window, mind working. Unfortunately the guard hadn't revealed his master's identity, so he'd have to keep winging it without that information. Whoever it was, they had elected to establish themselves with the trappings of a lord's manor or palace, so it was unlikely to be a reclusive scholar or someone who had lost themselves to the point of being little more than a beast.

 

Civility would matter then. Good to know.

 

He barely noticed when a servant brought a bowl of soup for Nyaya. There was regrettably little he could do if the resident decided to poison the woman, except of course inflict a horrible revenge upon the perpetrator. She was mortal and would need to eat.

 

In the strictest sense, so did the Unbridled Stallion of Oblivion - or at least failing to do so would eventually enfeeble him. A day or two without food wouldn't seriously impair him though and he was damned if he'd trust the food here.

 

The moment dragged on as Nyaya finished the bowl and the Unbridled Stallion of Oblivion brooded over the possibilities and schemed how to bring the manse down around the ears of whoever was in charge if things soured. It would have to be suitably flashy and dramatic to make sure that everyone in the area got the message.

 

He was just beginning to wonder if this had gone beyond the usual 'keep unwelcome guests waiting as a subtle rebuke' point into 'assembling an army to get rid of intruders' time frames when the warrior from before returned to the room.

 

"My master now awaits your company," he declared.

 

With a sly smile the Unbridled Stallion of Oblivion continued to stare out of the window for a moment and then waved casually out of it before turning. "Well let's be on then."

 

The ghost's face twitched slightly, evidently masking the urge to glance out the window and see who was being waved at. Instead of questioning gesture he bowed them out of the room and led him past another guard - evidently his replacement - and deeper into the manse.

 

At the end of the hall matching staircases led north and south. If the manse had been intact then each would have parted into two staircases, one to each of the east and west galleries overlooking the chamber but at some point the west wall had partially collapsed, obliterating that gallery and blocking the north stair as well as the fountain that had been at the centre of the chamber.

 

One of the rooms leading off from the eastern gallery had been converted into a throne room with the addition of a dais and an impressive looking carved chair.

 

That wasn't what caught the Unbridled Stallion of Oblivion's attention though. It was the slim, elegant man sat in it - dressed in formal robes with soulsteel accessories and a black disc-in-circle caste mark glowing in sinister counterpoint to Unbridled Stallion of Oblivion's own empty circle.

 

Another deathknight, Abyss take it!

 

He masked his consternation behind the slightest of bows, one of respect between 'equals' and then straightened. Even without the dais his stature gave him no choice but to look up at the master of the manse. "My respects to you and that of my lord to your lord."

 

The man spread his hands and lowered his head slightly. "My own respects to your lord."

 

The insult was obvious but if the Unbridled Stallion of Oblivion hadn't known how to face derision with confidence he wouldn't have survived long enough to receive that name. "As you wish it then. I've offered respect due an equal in their territory but if you do not claim that status I will be about my business here without wasting further time."

 

"You will do no business in the City of Dead Flowers without my consent," commanded the other Deathknight.

 

"Will I not?" The words were tossed back over his shoulder as the Unbridled Stallion of Oblivion turned back towards the door. The insult was calculated and risky but the Moonshadow caste were not, by and large, selected mostly for their interest in the martial arts. The man might see through the bluff but it was unlikely he could strike down the Unbridled Stallion of Oblivion without giving some warning of his intent.

 

In the event, he did neither. "Please do not be so abrupt," he requested with an edge of annoyance. "I do not necessarily withhold such consent from one of my peers but I must enquire as to its nature first in order to see to my lord's interests."

 

When the Unbridled Stallion of Oblivion turned, he found that his host had descended from his seat and now stood at the edge of the dais. "Perhaps we have got off on the wrong foot. You catch me in the middle of affairs and I am of ill-temper due to others less courteous than yourself."

 

"Hmm." The Unbridled Stallion of Oblivion pretended to give this attempted rapprochement thought and then smiled, making a mental note to obtain inks and paint to re-apply his facial markings at some point soon. "Very well then. Let us start over. I am the Unbridled Stallion of Oblivion and I serve Eye and Seven Despairs in the Hidden Darkness."

 

The other deathknight bowed to the same degree that the Unbridled Stallion of Oblivion had earlier. "And I am the Shatterer of Ways, servant of the First and Forsaken Lion in the Hollow Darkness. As I lay claim to this shadowland in my lord's name, I must enquire as to your business here."

 

"I am delighted to share that matter with you, in light of our lords' past alliances." It was no spur of the moment decision for Unbridled Stallion of Oblivion to speak the truth as to which among the Deathlords had chosen him for the dark exaltation - the Shatterer of Ways might well possess the charms required to tell truth from fiction - but it was convenient nonetheless, that the Eye and Seven Despairs had indeed been as close an ally as any to the much feared First and Forsaken Lion. Seven centuries and more since, but even so it gave some claim upon a civil reception.

 

"I am sure you are aware that agents of one of the Deathlords is trying to forge an alliance with House Mnemon and House Ragara and that these negotiations are taking place in the Tengese cities to the north." The Unbridled Stallion of Oblivion hoped that any doubts about these matters would be picked up on only in associated with his purported confidence that the Shatterer of Ways knew of them.

 

"Not only am I aware of the negotiations, I can offer you an assurance that in the case of Mnemon at least, the dealings are being put to rest." The Shatterer of Ways stepped back to his chair. "Their negotiator is about to suffer a sad demise."

 

Well that was lucky, the Unbridled Stallion of Oblivion noted. We have a confession - not that it's much use when spoken here with no useful witness. He heard a slight catch in the breath of Nyaya but no more reaction than that. "A nemissary can make for an excellent assassin," he agreed out loud. And when the Shatterer of Ways gets a report we might be mentioned. "But demons are less reliable."

 

"Demons?"

 

The Unbridled Stallion of Oblivion nodded. "It would seem that we are not the only ones to pay attention to a certain Deathlord over-stretching himself in this direction. And while my lord would prefer that the area fall under the banner of the Lion than of certain others, it is also the case that a third party is meddling in the matter and with no great subtlety."

 

"I see." The Shatterer of Ways frowned. "A sorcerer or an infernal cult then?"

 

"It seems likely. Ultimately so long as one of the dead secures the region for our cause, it is not of immediate concern to my lord whom it might be. Such affairs are not his focus after all." That was plausible enough. Eye and Seven Despair had some troops but his preference was always to arrange for someone else to deal with messy and expensive military campaigns while he hoarded his resources for other pursuits.

 

The enthroned Deathknight sneered. "So much for fellow feeling between our lords."

 

"The Lion is preferable to a certain upstart but so long as the road marches towards oblivion..." The Unbridled Stallion of Oblivion shrugged. "But if a significant adversary is moving against one of our lords then it behooves the others to be aware in case they are similarly targeted."

 

"It does indeed. Although if An Teng is of so little interest to Eye and Seven Despairs, I must wonder how he is so informed about affairs here."

 

The Unbridled Stallion of Oblivion spread his hands. "My lord watches and listens. And I am sure that you have not failed to notice that my lackey here is Tengese. Demons rampaging upon the streets of Salt-Founded Glory are certainly worthy of report."

 

"I suppose that they would be. There is, I believe, a Dragonblooded sorcerer in An Teng who might have summoned them."

 

"Let us say, for the moment, that he is almost excluded from suspicion due to facts that he would prefer not to be circulated. However, that leaves us with a paucity of known summoners. The Lintha spring to mind of course..."

 

"The Lintha," the Shatterer of Ways observed, "Might well wish to disrupt any extension of the Silver Prince's influence here in the south-west. That's one reason that I find them to be tolerable neighbours."

 

"I'd heard that they're demon worshipers, but if my lord has an agent amongst them he hasn't shared that with me."

 

The other deathknight laughed. "I would be greatly impressed if he did. Ask your lackey what the Lintha do to traitors. It's an education. Whether or not they could actually summon a demon though, that's more of a question. It's most likely that one of the other Dragonblooded in An Teng is a sorcerer - there are usually ten or more of them in The City of the Steel Lotus. How much of a sorcerer do you need to be to summon a demon?"

 

"More of a sorcerer than most. Oh, quite a number of Dragonblooded learn the basics but they're not mad. Those who know that spell are regulated closely. Partly because it's dangerous for them, but more because it makes the sorcerers too powerful for the liking of the less talented."

 

The Shatterer of Ways laughed. "The nail that stands up gets hammered down? Yes, I've noticed that about them."

 

"It's one reason I'm more concerned by the Silver Prince allying with House Ragara than I am by Mnemon. If there's a nail that stands out in the Scarlet Dynasty it would have to be her. The other Houses will knock her down, but there's no one person in House Ragara that they can unite against. That makes them a more enduring ally and you know what House the local satrap is from."

 

"I haven't missed that, no," agreed the Shatterer of Ways drily. "I'll certainly see about cutting off those negotiations too, if you'll keep me appraised about who is sending the demons?"

 

"How very favourable for you: that you will do what you already intended to do, while I go further than I really have to. Perhaps you could at least provide my lackey with some arms and armour in exchange for my inconvenience."

 

"Really, Unbridled Stallion, you came here to me."

 

The Unbridled Stallion of Oblivion nodded very mildly. "I did. And did I need to?"

 

The threat hung over the conversation for a moment.

 

"By all means, I think my hospitality can stretch to that. I take it that you will be moving on?" the Shatterer of Ways asked tightly.

 

"Tomorrow. Although I wouldn't wish to distract you by remaining within your manse."

 

"That would be quite alright." Stay here where I can watch you.

 

"No no, I couldn't impose," insisted the Unbridled Stallion of Oblivion. "Do let me know though, if there's something that I can do for you in exchange for all the help that you've provided."

 

"Oh believe me, if you let me know who is meddling in my affairs I will consider myself to be more than satisfied. Are you sure I can't offer you hospitality for the day?"

 

The Unbridled Stallion of Oblivion bowed deeply. Mockingly. "You may offer whatever you please, but we have business to attend to. A pleasure to meet you, a pleasure that we shall have to revisit in the future."


	9. Nyaya

The armouries of the manse, once known as the Palace of the Lotus, were well equipped even compared to those of the militia in Salt-Founded Glory. Although there were ample spreading-the-water-knives, Nyaya elected to take a more conventional khopesh. She'd used one before in her travels and found them to be useful as a tool as well as an effective weapon.

 

She kept it in hand as they left the Palace of the Lotus and her eyes upon Ghora's back. He'd managed to get rid of the demon in the street and presumably the one at the Immaculate temple but that had been sorcery so he might not be terribly formidable if she just took a sword to him.

 

A steel blade is the best counter-spell, was the old motto of anyone facing a sorcerer. And such a counter was always best applied between the shoulder-blades.

 

"You seem awfully familiar with all of this," she observed when they were what she considered a safe distance away. "Enough to drop all the right names."

 

"Honestly, I had to run over a couple of points quickly to avoid showing my ignorance. His throwing the Silver Prince out has me baffled. If I'd had to name a name I'd've guessed Mask of Winters to be the one ambitious enough to be negotiating with Mnemon."

 

"And all those other names?"

 

"Eye and Seven Despairs is something of a recluse by Deathlord standards. It's been a few years since anyone's even reported seeing him. But after Mask of Winters seized Thorns, everyone's been a lot more paranoid about what he might be up to. He's supposedly holed up in a Shadowland somewhere in the mountains north of Harborhead, which is near enough to Thorns for folk to worry. I figured that if I claimed to be working for him then no one was likely to challenge me."

 

"And he's very conveniently an ally of the Forsaken First Lion?"

 

"First and Forsaken Lion. Yes, although not recently. Most of what I know I learned from ghosts, some of whom have been around for a long while. Recent affairs I might not know about, but centuries ago is easier to find out. Apparently there was some sort of rift amongst the Death Lords round about the time of the Great Contagion and the Fair Folk Invasions that followed. I presume, although I don't know for sure, that one faction wanted to march their own armies into Creation - for good or ill. Maybe both."

 

"Which side was this First and Forsaken Lion on?"

 

"I don't even know for sure what the sides were," he said and Nyaya frowned. He was lying. She'd seen him lie to the Shatterer of Ways and he was lying to her now.

 

"But my sources tell me that the First and Forsaken Lion was on the same side as Eye and Seven Despairs in that struggle and they parted ways when the Lion decided to march the army he'd assembled into Stygia."

 

"So he rules Stygia?"

 

"Not exactly. For whatever reason he left the city shortly afterwards, marched his army into the Fire Mountains and started building a citadel there. So far as I know there's some sort of a council ruling Stygia. I don't have much current information though - I've never been to the Blessed Isle and from what I can tell, Shadowlands there tend to be quite tightly policed."

 

Nyaya nodded and then rested the tip of her newly acquired blade upon his shoulder. Most of what he'd said rang true, but the one lie left her with doubts.

 

Ghora slowed carefully to a halt, wary of the blade. "I assume that there's a point to this?"

 

"You're not a sorcerer, are you? You're a necromancer."

 

He paused, hesitated and said: "The two are not always mutually exclusive."

 

"Which implies but isn't actually an answer."

 

"Very well then." He turned his head, chin above the blade. "I am a sorcerer. And I am a necromancer. And while I am far from the mightiest in either respect, I suspect I do not need to point out how rare it is to have facility for both arts."

 

He was right. Sorcerers were rare enough and necromancers supposedly even rarer. To know the secrets of both? It was likely that only a handful of individuals in all Creation were so accomplished.

 

He also seemed to be telling the truth. "And how did little Ghora learn all of that?" she demanded. "You said you learned from a mortal sorcerer in the Varangian cities."

 

"I never quite said that. I really was an exorcist there, but the sorcerer who chose me as an apprentice was no mortal and he wasn't Varangian. Isn't, perhaps. I'm not sure if he's alive or not." Ghora spread his hands. "If you resent that I called you a lackey back there, believe me I was the butt of his household for long enough to know how it feels. It was still necessary."

 

"You studied with a sorcerer in the East... but you still don't explain your necromancy and you know far too much about the Deathlords. You're lying to me."

 

There was a slap of flesh against steel and her hand jerked as Ghora moved sharply and pinned the blade of her sword between the palms of his hands. "I am. And that too is necessary. The more you learn, the more danger you are in."

 

Nyaya pulled lightly against the blade but it didn't slide free, he had a good strong grip. "And what if I have no choice but to accept that risk?"

 

"Then I'd counsel you to run. I'm going to play this game out and see how many wheels I can spike in the process."

 

"How is sending his assassin after the satrap playing the game. If Ragara Soras Jor dies here, the Legions could easily assume that An Teng is revolting."

 

"There's a joke there but let's leave it alone. Every gossip in town knows that Ragara Soras Jor is hosting a guest of significance this month - it's why Lalaca is making for the City of the Steel Lotus with all haste. Tepet Ejava and Tepet Arada - two of the best generals that their house ever produced and the first a solid candidate for the throne. Security will be tight enough to challenge even a nemissary and perhaps even a demon. That gives us our best chance of having a nice public capture of the assassin by someone whose word can't be challenged. If the satrap confirms our innocence, Prince Laxhander will jump to support that position."

 

"And how many people will die if you do that?"

 

"Precisely as many as would die anyway. No one lives forever, Nyaya. Creation itself is finite and will someday end. But if some die earlier than they might otherwise, that the inevitable end of Creation is deferred, then so long as I am among those risked I won't hold myself to be more evil than I must be in pursuit of that goal."

 

"You're insane," Nyaya whispered.

 

He released his hold upon the sword. "’Only the insane have the strength to prosper, only those who prosper may judge what is sane.’ I read that in a book, someone had set down the arguments for and against the rule of the Anathema when the Dragonblooded were rallying against them. But then I suppose I can hardly be said to be in a prosperous position, can I." Ghora spread his hands wide. "Go ahead, Nyaya. Judge me. I am putting my life - indeed, my very soul - at terrible risk for the sake of an abstract principle. Is that valour or madness?"

 

She shook her head and raised the sword. "What principle are you talking about?"

 

"That justice be done. That the killer of Mnemon Dhana should pay the price for his death, that the summoner of demons for that purpose also be called to account. To hold back the end of all, one day at a time, one battle at a time."

 

"…yeah, I’m going back to my original conclusion. You’re as mad as a Raksha. Do you think you’re some hero from a scroll? One of the Exalted?"

 

Ghora looked at her and spread out his hands. "Funny that you should say that." The black circle upon his brow appeared again and shadows began form around him. Just as the light of the sun or the moon was supposed to surround the Anathema. "Some would say that that’s what we are. Recruited from the brink of death, initiated into the secret cults of the Deathlord, baptised in the soul of a dead god… I can no longer boast the title of deathknight for I have broken faith with my master but I remain of that nature. We call ourselves the Abyssal Exalted."

 

"Golden Lord protect me…" Nyaya felt cold sweat trickling across her skin beneath her clothes and the iron scales of the cuirass she’d received from the manse. "Pale Mistress condemn you."

 

Ghora nodded. "You do not need the protection of the Gods from me, Nyaya. If you wish to leave, you are free to do so. I could do with someone to watch my back but only if you’re willing." He grinned, teeth white between pale lips. "Although if I’m asking someone who’s already put their sword to my back you can imagine that I’m short of alternatives."

 

"If I’m ever to go home, I need to find proof of what’s going on." With some reluctance she returned her new sword to its scabbard. "I suppose you’re still my best bet for that."

 

"I’ll take what I can get," the little necromancer agreed. "Let’s find somewhere more discreet where we can talk this over and piece what’s happened so far together. I think we both know things that the other doesn’t yet."

 

E-X-A-L-T-E-D

 

The chamber that Ghora selected for their conversation was high in one of the towers. It gave Nyaya a giddy feeling to look down upon a city from such a height. Was this how birds saw Creation? She’d probably been higher on the cloud but that had been unreal in the magical nature of her footing. Now she was looking down from something solid and real – although she was careful to avoid the part of the room that was open into mid-air after some long ago accident or attack had blasted a good chunk of the wall apart.

 

"Did you have to pick a room this high for us to talk?" she asked.

 

"It’s not easy to get to for anyone who comes after us," Ghora replied. "And I can get us out of here by air. Unless Shatterer of Ways is a sorcerer, it’ll be hard for him to come at us from that direction."

 

"I suppose that that makes sense. So where do we start: Mnemon Dhana being attacked by the Anuhle?"

 

He shook his head, perching himself on what she thought had once been the some sort of cabinet, now fallen onto one side. "Let’s go back a bit earlier," Ghora proposed. "Mnemon Dhana was meeting an agent of the dead. Was it the first meeting? Presumably, if he needed a token to identify himself."

 

"We’re assuming that that’s the truth. What if he received the coin at the meeting?" asked Nyaya.

 

"I’m confident he told me the truth when he claimed to have received the thing from his great-grandmother – that would be Mnemon. But maybe it’s not for identification. We’ll need to ask him about that."

 

"Agreed. So he’s attacked by the Anuhle on the way to the meeting or after it?"

 

"Could be either. His whole movements that night are in doubt until you met him."

 

Nyaya nodded. "Well we couldn’t exactly interrogate a highly placed member of one of the Great Houses."

 

"That’s not going to be a barrier now. So we need to know what the token was for, was this the first meeting, had he had the meeting already and…"

 

"Who was he meeting?"

 

Ghora nodded. "Indeed. So he’s attacked and his guards killed. You get involved and the Anuhle takes his leg off."

 

She flinched at the memory. "You said that Lady Nirvasana was there?" she asked.

 

"According to my witness, yes. And it agrees with her own statement about finding the coin there, although she didn’t tell you when."

 

"So when did she get there? Coincidence?"

 

The two of the both laughed cynically at the idea and then gave each other startled looks at the shared emotion.

 

"So she either knew exactly where to be or she was following either the demon or Mnemon Dhana. I could see her as a spy," Nyaya observed, "But I’d have thought that one of the dowager’s ladies in waiting would be under too much scrutiny for her to have studied sorcery."

 

"Even if she didn’t summon itself, that doesn’t rule out the possibility that she’s working for or with the sorcerer," Ghora mused. "I do believe I’d like to ask some questions of Lady Nirvasana but we’ll have to settle for Mnemon Dhana – tonight at least."

 

"Is that going to require… I don’t know. A magic circle, special ingredients… candles…" Nyaya trailed off as she saw the condescending look on Ghora’s face. "Oh, go to Malfeas. We aren’t all students of sorcerers."

 

"And it’s a mixed blessing at best. To answer your question, I’ll need a circle but I can mark that out in anything. It’s the essence and the will that matter, not window dressing. That’s the case for most sorcery and necromancy. But this little lecture is taking us away from the point."

 

"Alright. So the night before last, you arrive and banish the Anuhle – how did you know about it anyway?"

 

"One of the dockers came running to me in a panic. That happens every couple of weeks – it’s amazing how many drunks convince themselves that they’re seeing demons but he was willing to fork over a siu for me to check it out and I’m not usually in the habit of turning down easy money. It was just my luck that it turned out to be for real."

 

"I’d not have thought that a… what was it, Abysmal Exalt? Would be short of money."

 

"Abyssal, not abysmal… ah, I see what you did there. Someone as clever as you must have to worry about cutting yourself on your own tongue. As for money, a deathknight who’s doing his master’s will will usually be funded generously. The Deathlords have had centuries to build up fortunes to suppor their plans after all. I don’t have that to fall back on so I’ve been living on what I earn as a surgeon and from side-jobs like that one." Ghora cleared his throat. "Yes, I arrived and banished the demon as well as preventing Dhana from bleeding out in the street. I didn’t particularly fancy being found there with a maimed dynast and a passed out militia woman, so I left just ahead of your comrades arriving in response to your whistle."

 

"Fine. So what happens then? Dhana’s taken to the Immaculate Temple to heal and presumably our sorcerer learns that their demon didn’t finish the job."

 

"Yes. Either by report from Nirvasana or someone else – although if so the streets of Salt-Founded Glory were unbelievably busy that night – or perhaps he or she just put it together from the demon not reporting success and local gossip."

 

"If it’s the latter," Nyaya noted, "Then the sorcerer must be somewhere in Salt-Founded Glory to have heard so quickly. Are you sure it’s not Lalaca."

 

"It he was lying about being afraid of spiders then it was one hell of an act."

 

"…he’s afraid of spiders? What sort of reason is that to believe he’d not summon one as an assassin?"

 

Ghora shook his head. "Quite a good one. Binding a demon to your service is a tremendous struggle of will. The last thing a sorcerer would do would be to handicap themselves by summoning one of their own childhood fears. The luminata might have been him I suppose but it’s not very plausible that he’d be behind the anuhle."

 

"I’ll take your word for that. And I suppose that this is where the nemissary comes in."

 

"Quite. He must have been in Salt-Founded Glory already and when he heard that Mnemon Dhana was injured and at the Immaculate Temple, he went there and used the opportunity presented by the luminata attaching to penetrate their security. They’re generally formidable opponents so you did well to bring down his body. If there hadn’t been a dead or unconcious body there, he’d most likely have been banished back into the Underworld and be reporting failure to Shatterer of Ways now."

 

"Somehow I don’t think that Shatterer of Ways would take it well."

 

"I’m inclined to agree. The First and Forsaken Lion isn’t supposed to be particularly forgiving and I doubt that his subordinates will be any more inclined towards mercy."

 

"Is there anything that we could do to remove him as a threat?" asked Nyaya. "Now that I’m aware of him I’m worried about what he’ll do to An Teng."

 

Ghora bit his lip and licked away the trace of blood that welled up. "Eliminating Shatterer of Ways is more or less doable. Maybe. Deathknights aren’t exactly what the Wyld Hunt chases but they’re close enough."

 

"Couldn’t you do it?"

 

"Maybe. That sort of thing can go either way and he’s on his home turf. I’d prefer to have some pretty impressive back up before I tried taking him on – and no offense, you don’t tip the scales far enough in my favour for the idea to appeal to me. Besides, what happens once you’re rid of him? The First and Forsaken Lion can send another deathknight to take his place, sooner or later. Getting a Wyld Hunt out here would be child’s play compared to the prospects of the Realm organising the massive long term effort necessary to deal with a Shadowland of this magnitude. They’ve had centuries to do it, I doubt they’ll be talked into doing more when they’re on the brink of civil war."

 

"Couldn’t someone else occupy it?"

 

He laughed. "That’s treason, Nyaya. You’re not supposed to look to anyone but the Dragonblooded in a situation like this. I believe the Pale Mistress does what she can – her priests certainly have enough shrines around the edges of the city, but the Gods largely have other concerns. And who else would you trust with the place? Someone like me?"

 

Nyaya hesitated. Golden Lord, what _would_ someone like Ghora do with control of the Palace of the Lotus and potentially all of the City of Dead Flowers. "Well, someone like you already seems to _be_ in charge," she pointed out tartly. "So I doubt it would be much of an improvement."

 

"Oh please, spare me your flattery." Ghora looked out at the cloudy sky. "Ghost summoning requires night so we have a few hours to go. And once we’ve done that it’d probably be wise to leave straight away for Salt-Founded Glory. I have a deep desire to have Lady Nirvasana open her heart to me."

 

"…"

 

"No, not literally." He lay himself back on the cabinet. "Given you got a good knock to the head last night, you’d probably not better sleep until at least sunset – and assuming that you don’t want to miss Mnemon Dhana, that probably means sleeping while we travel."

 

"Thanks for the reminder. Do you know when I last had a good night’s sleep?"

 

"About the same time I did." He waved his hand dismissively. "Wake me at sunset."

 

A few moments later, he could be heard to snore.

 

"Bastard," Nyaya said in a resigned voice and drew her sword. If she couldn’t sleep then perhaps working through the basic forms would keep her busy. She was no doubt rusty and somehow she had a suspicion that she might need those skills in the morning… if not sooner.


	10. Ghora

The Unbridled Stallion of Oblivion, who'd once had a name of his own and for now went by Ghora, slept.

 

And in his sleep, he dreamed.

 

Dark passages - some wide enough to sail a galleon through, some so narrow that even he had to crab sideways to pass through them and a few that were in some manner both - that he travelled, his only guide his master.

 

Eye and Seven Despairs was that. Teacher, saviour, tyrant and object lesson.

 

"You will abandon me when the time comes," the old-young ghost decreed with confidence. "Abandon but not betray. For you will see how I handle traitors."

 

Except the Deathlord had never said that to him.

 

Had he?

 

They walked out into the library to see three figures around the room. Ghora himself upon a high stool at the table, studying a vast black-leather covered tome, well night as tall as he was. Tense, nervous, attention flitting from the book before him to the other two in the room.

 

They deserved attention. Blood Scavenger was the obvious threat, sprawled in a chest by the broad fireplace, shooting glares in the direction of the table. Large, muscular - the tight black leathers he preferred put that on display - and the glower wasn't an uncommon decoration. The chain around his waist wasn't decorative - soulsteel links and wickedly hooked ends.

 

The more dangerous threat was leaning over Ghora from behind. She didn't look like dangerous, pale and draped only in flowing veils, but Star of Dirt and Dust was at least twice as dangerous when she intruded into Ghora's personal space (as she was), looked at him admiringly (the way she was) and expressed her fascination in his studies (you get the idea).

 

Ghora-that-observed felt a hand shove him forwards out of the stacks and when he staggered into the same space as Ghora-at-the-table the two snapped together.

 

Neither of the other two reacted to this, presumably unaware, but Ghora shivered as he felt Star of Dirt and Dust's breath against his skin. She was just playing with him of course. She was the master's concubine, even if everyone else in the Cold House lusted after her. Especially as everyone else in the Cold House lusted after her. But if she wanted the attention of anyone it was that of Blood Scavenger, Scar of Uproar and Chorus at Midnight.

 

She, like they and any of Eye and Seven Despairs' other retainers, were not supposed to know that the Deathlord was grooming a fourth deathknight or that it was the little Djala who haunted the library.

 

Then again, Ghora - or Qiyeshi, which was the name he was going by at the time - wasn't supposed to know that sometimes Eye and Seven Despairs occasionally went around the Manse disguised as his own concubine. It could be unhealthy to reveal that though. Not to mention none of his business.

 

It might even be the Deathlord pressing soft flesh against his shoulder and earning Qiyeshi a hateful glare from the jealous deathknight by the fire. He shuddered and the temper of Blood Scavenger snapped. He sprang to his feet and was half-way to the table when Chorus at Midnight stepped out of the stacks and gave him a challenging look.

 

For a moment it looked as if the Daybreak Caste was going to accept the challenge but he concluded that discretion would be the better course of action - he might beat Chorus at Midnight in a headlong clash but not if she decided to knife him in the back the next day - and instead stalked by her to take a book from the shelves.

 

He slammed the door when he left though.

 

Chorus at Midnight shook her head disapprovingly. "Would you care for a walk down towards the balconies?" She wasn't asking it of Qiyeshi.

 

Star of Dirt and Dust considered a moment and then gave the little sorcerer a demure smile before accepting the woman's hand. Qiyeshi wasn't sure if he should be jealous or relieved and decided to cover for both by burying himself in the tome.

 

When he looked up again, he was face to face with Eye and Seven Despairs - a disconcerting experience at the best of times. "Your travels have done you good, Unbridled Stalion of the Abyss," he observed. "You don't blush so much now."

 

"Is this a dream?"

 

"Maybe." The ancient ghost smirked. "I'm not calling you home, you've done nothing I didn't foresee."

 

"Just don't betray you."

 

There was a look of deep satisfaction on Eye and Seven Despairs' noseless face. "No indeed." He reached across the table and pushed lightly upon Ghora's chest. "Be off with you."

 

And so he was.

 

"Well that was disconcerting," he complained as he found himself standing on somewhere in the veldt of Harborhead. "Either the old bastard's back in the game or my head's just playing with me." He looked around at the surroundings. "Either way, I don't like this game much."

 

He turned and saw the dust rising to mark the passage of feet in the not that great distance. Human feet.

 

"Really not liking the game," Ghora continued, recognising the jet-black skin - largely exposed by clothes that amounted to little more than a loincloth - of the Totikari people. Tribes of that race were well known to the neighbours of Harborhead as a proud warrior race, i.e. belligerent and prone to visiting insufficiently protected villages of rival tribes on either side of the borders and taking whatever caught their eye. Money, cattle and slaves.

 

As a scion of a race with little to be proud of save a long history of involuntary servitude, Ghora wasn't terribly fond of the Totikari.

 

Equally predictably, they were heading right towards him.

 

Well if it was a dream then there was absolutely no reason not to cut loose, was there? And if, by some bizarre chance, he'd been transported several thousand miles from where he'd gone to sleep...

 

...well, the Totikari had it coming, didn't they?

 

"I'd like to introduce you to my little friend," he shouted once he'd finished casting a spell and the tribal warriors were in range to hear him. "He doesn't have a name, but you can call him 'Aargh! It burns!'"

 

The sheer non sequitur brought the column to a halt right where he wanted them: just beginning to spread out to surround him. That was when the tentacles of molten rock rose out of the ground and attacked them.

 

"Aargh! It burns!" screamed one of the warriors as the tentacle wrapped around his legs began to roast the limbs while flailing around.

 

Ghora threw back his head and laughed as he recognised the face of one of the warriors that had been holding his mother the last time that he saw her.

 

The one that had probably been holding her the last time that he'd heard her too, although he wasn't sure about that. Close enough for him to have a second tentacle wrap around the man's head and then both pulled in opposite directions, to the sound of more laughter.

 

E-X-A-L-T-E-D

 

"The sun's setting," Nyaya told him once she was sure his eyes were open. Judging by the way she'd woken him - warily prodding at his foot with the scabbard of her sword - she'd decided to treat him cautiously which was fine with Ghora.

 

"Nice timing then."

 

"I'm assuming that I don't want to know what you were dreaming of, judging by the giggling you were doing?"

 

"Probably not, although I'm sure they were actually manly chuckles."

 

"If you say so," she replied sceptically.

 

Ghora smirked. The protestation had been mostly pro forma anyway. When you're four feet tall and completely bald, the usual standards of manliness tend not to be terribly relevant. Still, posturing was a distraction from what he was about to do. "I'll need you to guard me while I cast this. It's one of the easiest of summoning spells but that's like saying that the White Sea is the smallest of the three seas."

 

"How big is the White Sea?" asked Nyaya.

 

"Larger than the coastal plane from Harbourhead to the Lap."

 

She nodded. "So how long are we talking about?"

 

"An hour or so." He knelt and drew a circle in the dust with one finger.

 

Nyaya stared at him and then shook her head in disbelief. "That's your magic circle?"

 

"I'll let you know a secret, one that sorcerers like to keep to themselves."

 

"What's that then?"

 

"There's no such thing as magic." Then he began to shape the spell and essence flooded out of him. It had been two years since he'd cast this but it came back to him almost by instinct. Before he began to the chant he added: "Only power and the will to shape it." Black chains of essence, links torn and twisted burst around the room as his anima banner rushed to life.

 

The woman jumped back, her expression clearly asking 'well what do you call this then?'

 

To shape essence through my naked will to twist the very tapestry of Creation, the rush of power through me, the very laws of the Primordial creators bent to my whim? Ghora's eyes were wide and vacant as he focused entirely upon the spell. After everything I've seen, after everywhere I've been...

 

"It makes me glad to be alive!" he screamed ecstatically between clauses in the spell.

 

Not even the dark of the night could have hidden the blaze of the anima banner but it didn't draw in predators. The last few months had alerted the denizens of the City of Dead Flowers that the blaze of deathly dark essence was a warning that they should avoid and if this one took a different form than that which Shatterer of Ways had exhibited, that added the fear of the unknown to their reactions.

 

His chanting rose to a crescendo and with it, Ghora's own doubts. Many of the dead would elect to enter Lethe and reincarnation... or more rarely slip entirely into Oblivion. The Immaculate Faith taught that the former was the only righteous course of action and Mnemon Dhana would have received that lesson from the cradle.

 

If the dynast had been entirely true to his upbringing then Mnemon Dhana would have no ghost to be summoned and this was a waste of effort. Worse, it would embarrass Ghora in front of Nyaya - right now his only supporter. He'd not dared show weakness or doubt earlier and now he was in too deep to back off.

 

The one thing that was in Ghora's favour was the method of Dhana's death: few things could bind a soul to Creation like a death by violence. There was a reason people feared the hungry ghosts of the untimely slain rising to take indiscriminate vengeance.

 

So educated morality or emotional outrage? Which would win?

 

Touching a finger-tip to the sharp edge of one of his scalpel he scattered droplets of blood across the circle.

 

As the spectral form rose like red-black smoke from the blood, Ghora relaxed slightly. Emotions beat educations. Depressing but at least predictable.

 

"Lord Dhana, I've summoned you because I have questions unanswered."

 

"You presume to summon me, sorcerer!?" the ghost - who lacked his leg and was standing with help of a familiar looking spread-the-water knife - demanded.

 

Ghora nodded. "Your grasp of the obvious is profound. Now, I believe that there are a few matters that you may have forgotten to disclose to me about your dealings two nights ago. You can disclose those matters to me willingly or unwillingly... but you will disclose them."

 

"Are you...?" Mnemon Dhana asked, evidently not quite familiar with the new context of their interaction. "Are you threatening me, sorcerer?"

 

"The word is necromancer and that was merely a statement. Threats can follow if necessary. How long has your great-grandmother been dealing with the dead?"

 

"How long have you?" the ghost demanded imperiously.

 

Ghora nodded. "Unwilling it shall be then." He gritted his teeth and closed his will around the ghost.

 

"What! No!" protested Dhana. Untutored he struggled against the bondage, pitting stubborn defiance against educated and honed willpower.

 

For a moment the struggle was in the balance and then, with sweat upon Ghora's brow, Mnemon Dhana dropped to one knee. "Who are you...? No, what are you, that you can command me so? Some new breed of Anathema?"

 

"Something like that," the necromancer informed him, casually. "Now... I asked you a question. Answer it."

 

"I... I do not know how long she has had dealings with the dead," confessed the ghost. "The meeting that I went to was my first experience of them."

 

"I see. Well start at the beginning. How did Mnemon pick you to be her representive?"

 

"I don't know. She didn't consult me, I received instructions and the token to identify me to them. I assume that I was in the right place at the right time."

 

"So she didn't tell you about this face to face?"

 

Mnemon Dhana shook his head. "No, I haven't seen great-grandmother in years. She rarely leaves the Blessed Isle since the Empress vanished. Things are too tense for her to be away from the centre of politics."

 

"That must have been quite a letter to receive. I presume that you burned it once you'd memorised it."

 

"Of course! It would be unthinkable to risk that sort of information falling into the wrong hands."

 

"It would be just a little embarassing," agreed Ghora sardonically. "I imagine that the other Great Houses wouldn't look on that favourably."

 

"It could be enough to convince them to unite against us and the Immaculate Order would withdraw their support from us."

 

"Why did she trust you?" asked Nyaya. "No offense meant, but if it's that sensitive, why would she take the risk of sending a letter instead of some more secure method of communication? For that matter, why not send a Dragonblood to carry out the negotiations? Isn't it a little strange for the dynasty to trust a mortal with something like this?"

 

"Aren't you supposed to be guarding us?" asked Ghora. "It's a good point though. Answer her," he instructed the ghost while Nyaya went back to the door.

 

"No doubt she was aware that I can be trusted," Mnemon Dhana answered somewhat huffily. "And the very fact that I'm not Exalted means that I am under less scrutiny by the enemies of our House. If a dynast came here suddenly then the reasons would be a topic of speculation in every salon in the Imperial City. As I'm in An Teng already I'm far less likely to draw attention. And the letter was encrypted - no casual inspection would reveal anything."

 

"An encrypted letter and a mysterious token. That's not much to go on when you're doing something that could have your entire House destroyed for treason against the Realm. Did you get any verification of it?"

 

"I doubt if my Exalted cousins would dare to question an order from Mnemon, but I certainly wouldn't be so brash. Besides, only a handful of people know that cipher."

 

Ghora nodded. "She does rather have that reputation. Much like her mother. So what were your instructions? Go to a particular place and flash the token around until someone contacted you?"

 

"A little more sophisticated than that, but essentially, yes. There's a rundown townhouse near the temple of the Golden Lord -"

 

Ghora saw Nyaya's head turn at that and made a mental note to ask her about it later.

 

"- and when I asked the guards there for directions to one of brothels in the area, I flashed the coin, which let them know to give me directions to the actual meeting place."

 

"Fairly discreet," agreed Ghora. "So where was the actual meeting?"

 

The ghost struggled to resist but the binding forced his tongue. "In the grove of willows outside the East Gate."

 

"...you're not serious?"

 

"I cannot lie to you, much as I'd like to."

 

"You realise that the gates are guarded and supposed to be closed at night."

 

"A little coin opens most gates, sorcerer. And the bribed rarely admit to their crimes."

 

"It's also more than a little memorable. They might not want to admit to taking a little bribe for opening the gates but they won't forget you and anyone primed with the right questions to ask would be able to trace you. So much for your discretion. Fine, so who was waiting for you in the grove?"

 

"One man, alone." The ghost smiled wistfully. "Young and handsome, dark-haired and dressed like a sea-man. He had two guards but they waited outside the grove with my own."

 

"Did he give you a name?"

 

"No, but he had a token to match my own."

 

"Odd that he didn't have more in the way of bona fides."

 

Mnemon Dhana shrugged at Ghora's doubts. "It's for my great-grandmother to decide whether or not to place her trust in them. I followed her instructions precisely."

 

"You followed someone's instructions," muttered Nyaya.

 

"I'm beginning to wonder the same," Ghora agreed. "But never mind that for now. So what did you discuss?"

 

"It was in the nature of a preliminary discussion. He was asking for a free hand with the Coral Archipelago and Wavecrest - effectively leaving him as satrap of the West; permission to send an expedition to the Island of Versino; and information about the movements of certain flagships of the Water and Earth fleets of the Imperial Navy. He didn't say which flagships exactly, just that Mnemon would know."

 

"And she was going to give him all that?" asked Ghora cautiously.

 

"That would be up to her, but I doubt all of it. We hadn't got that far, it was more a matter of seeing what was on each other's wish list."

 

"And what did your great-grandmother have on her wish list?"

 

"The blockading of several ports in the south to keep the legions there from reaching the Blessed Isle in the event of a civil war there." Dhana seemed uncomfortable with that idea. "A Lintha vessel and prisoners from among its enemies, raids on the supply lines of the Vermilion Legion; and a copy of a book called the Broken Winged Crane."

 

Ghora's jaw worked soundlessly.

 

After a moment of silence, Nyaya turned and looked over at him. "Ghora? Is something the matter?"

 

"No no, everything's just fine. One of the most powerful sorceresses among the Scarlet Dynasty is trying to lay hands upon the most notorious infernal text in history. What could possibly be wrong with that?"

 

"Well it's not great, but don't sorcerers deal with that sort of thing anyway?"

 

"No, we really don't. Not if we're wise or at least loosely attached to our souls. The Broken Winged Crane was proscribed even by the Anathema. I've never seen even a partial version and if I did I'd be highly tempted to burn it, whatever the consequences."

 

"...I'll just shut up about it, shall I?"

 

"I have strong feelings about that sort of thing," Ghora conceded. He turned back to the circle where Mnemon Dhana was confined. "So other than damnation, what else did your great-grandmother want?"

 

"That was everything that she asked me about. He did offer transportation of House Legions from our satrapies to the Blessed Isle but I wasn't told anything about that so I said we might be interested but that the other items were more of a priority."

 

"And then?"

 

"That was more or less it. We were checking that nothing the other party was asking for was out of the question and then we broke off to consider what we might be willing to offer on each point and communicate with our superiors if need be."

 

"It's rather depressing to me that neither of you seem to regard the Broken Winged Crane as unacceptable. And I can't believe that your great-grandmother would be happy to have someone poking around Versino."

 

"She didn't prohibit Versino from conversation although she may decide not to allow it," Mnemon Dhana agreed. "And I'd honestly never heard of the Broken Winged Crane until it was mentioned in her letter."

 

"I'm not sure if I should be appalled at the gaps in your schooling or glad that the Realm isn't teaching people about the diabolical arts."

 

"We try not to infect our children with sinful -" the ghostly dynast began a little smugly.

 

"Ghora!" Nyaya snapped. "I think there's someone on the stairs!"

 

"Dammit!" The necromancer broke the circle around Mnemon Dhana with a sharp gesture. "Don't get any funny ideas," he warned. "I've still got a binding upon you and a couple more questions to ask."

 

"Believe me, the binding would be hard to miss."

 

Ghora went to the gap in the wall, preparing cast a spell -

 

And then a black arrow flashed up through the gap and the ceiling above was shattered, raining stone and glass down upon him.


	11. Nyaya

"What the devil was that?" Nyaya shouted, staring fruitlessly into dust cloud created by the sudden demolition. The darkness outside didn't help.

 

"I've no idea," Mnemon Dhana admitted. "Do you think that he's dead?" he added hopefully and then his face fell. "I still seem to be bound, so I assume not."

 

"Help me get him out of there," she ordered, moving forward cautiously. For all she could tell right now the floor might have given way or be about to.

 

The ghost shook his head, leaning upon the spread-the-water knife he was using as a crutch. "I don't have to take orders from you, peasent. And if he's not dead now, I hold out hopes for the near future."

 

"If he -" Nyaya coughed on the dust. "If he dies then what do you think will happen to us?"

"What more can they do? I'm dead, remember?"

 

"And we're your best chance of finding out who's responsible!" she stumbled on a slab of rock and caught herself on her hands and knees. That might be a safer way to do this, Nyaya realised and then winced as one hand encountered glass and she felt the sting of shallow cuts on her knuckles.

 

The ghost chuckled. "I've more hopes for my kin sending someone to obtain revenge," he told her.

 

Cursing the useless dynast, Nyaya scrambled forwards and her hand came down on flesh, not stone or glass. "Ghora."

"Ugh," the child-like voice agreed. "Nyaya?" He coughed twice and then she felt him move. "Ow. Son-of-a-strix, that hurts. What's happened?"

"I was about to ask you that."

 

"Help me up," the little man mumbled and she was easily able to haul his light frame off the floor, rising up to her own knees. "Dhana!" he shouted out. "Don't let anyone in here!"

 

The ghost cursed and she heard him moving away - the direction of the door to the chamber.

 

"I think I saw an arrow," Ghora told her, moving back and away from the edge.

 

"It'd be quite a shot to reach this high," Nyaya protested. "Unless maybe it was from another building."

"I think we're dealing with quite an archer. We're going to need another way out of here."

 

Nyaya waved her free hand to clear away the dust that was beginning to settle. "The only ways out of here are the door and -" she pointed back at where there had been a wall and a ceiling at one point.

 

"I know," agreed Ghora.

 

There was a clash of metal on metal from Dhana's position. The two exchanged looks.

 

"Well we are missing a ceiling," Nyaya suggested, pointing upwards. "If I can give you a boost, maybe we can get to the stairs on the next floor up."

 

"It means leaving Dhana behind," Ghora noted.

 

"He was more than willing to do the same to you."

"...I suppose we've asked most of the important questions," he conceded. "As you say then."

 

Nyaya looked up and picked a suitable place under what was now the edge of the floor above, moving under it and threw her sword up before cupping her hands into a stirrup. "Come on."

 

Placing one foot in her hands, Ghora stretched as she lifted, his hands just grasping the edge. He scrabbled for a moment, legs kicking, and then pulled himself over and onto the floor above.

 

"Give me a hand!" Nyaya called but the little sorcerer jumped aside and out of her view.

 

"You little sh-"

 

A black blur that might have been an arrow crashed into the floor above, smashing the section where Ghora had stood into fist-sized chunks. Nyaya threw her hands across her face as the stones rained down.

 

"Quickly," he called down, head re-appearing on the edge. One of his pale hands was braced against the edge but the other reached down to her.

 

Nyaya jumped up, seized his hand in hers and felt him strain to support her weight. They both cried out and then she stretched, managing to get her other hand onto the edge and secure herself. "I've got it."

 

Ghora let go of her hand, which joined the other gripping the edge, and caught the shoulders of her armour. Panting with effort, Nyaya pulled herself up and felt the grating of scales against the rough edge. A time or two she thought she'd gotten caught but desperate yanking by Ghora managed to bring her up to the point that her gut was over the edge, putting her centre of gravity onto their side.

 

Below there was a howl of pain that Nyaya thought might be Dhana's voice. She kicked ferociously and got her feet up.

 

It was tempting to take a moment to breathe, but there was no time and Ghora was running to the door of this chamber. Recovering her sword, she followed him. This is worse than guarding caravens on the trail to Gem, she concluded.

 

To her bemusement, the little sorcerer paid no attention to the stairs down and instead raced for those leading higher in the building.

 

"Where are you going?" she hissed, following him.

 

"It's probably Shatterer of Ways and his troops are probably good enough to remember to block the stairs as well as break into the room we were using. Our best bet for getting out of here is off the top."

 

"Won't that just make us more of a target for him?" Nyaya asked.

 

Ghora grinned, a trickle of blood reddening the left side of his face. Together with the still glowing black brand upon his forehead, it restored something of the mask he had affected when she last saw him. "Not with what I have in mind," he promised.

 

"Are you sure that you're in shape to cast a spell? You did get hit on the head."

 

He looked back, stumbled slightly on a step and then recovered himself. "I'd better be, hadn't I?"

 

"That is not - huff - very comforting." Her knee was protesting the pace but she forced herself to ignore it. Fatigue and pain had to come second to survival.

 

There was another crash from below and she felt the building quiver. "What was that?"

 

"I get the distinct suspicion that Shatterer of Ways has given up on hitting me specifically with his bow and is just going to bring down the top of the building," panted Ghora.

 

"Can't you do anything?"

 

"Yes! It's called running!"

 

Another quiver, and a few moments later a third went through the building. They were getting worse, but up ahead the ceiling of the stairwell was getting closer.

 

"Close enough?" asked Nyaya between breaths.

 

Ghora shook his head slightly and kept scrambling, now using one hand on the rail to haul himself up. "I think i... ow, I think I'll need a good night's sleep myself."

 

"Not - right - now." With a surge of effort, Nyaya moved up and caught him up bridal fashion. "How high do we - huff - have to get? The roof?"

"There or the floor below."

 

The stairs ended at a closed door that remained closed when Nyaya gave it a kick. The building shook then. No mere shiver.

 

"Well we'd better be high enough," she told him. "We're out of time."

 

Ghora nodded. "My thoughts exactly."

 

With a crash the wall of the stairwell blew in well below them.

 

Nyaya took her sword and started hacking at the door where she thought the lock might be, ignoring Ghora's chanting and the dark chains shattering around him as his essence flooded out around them. Either his spell would work or it wouldn't.

 

All that she could focus upon was the door.

 

The wooden door cracked and she threw her shoulder against it, hoping that it would be enough. It gave way - at least a little - and she backed up, hacking again to extend the crack.

 

There was a roar from below - something cataclysmic.

 

"I think that this is it!"

 

Ghora nodded and then brought the spell to it's climax. There was a wild cry from above, like a vast bird, and the floor lurched beneath them. Nyaya fell to her hands and knees, dropping her sword and having to scramble to catch it before it slid away.

 

Clinging to the stair rail, the sorcerer poked his head over the edge and looked down. "Oh. Well... good news, bad news."

 

"Is this really the time?"

 

"Okay... how are you doing at opening the door?"

 

Nyaya tried to get up and felt the floor lurch again. "What's going on?"

 

"The spell worked and the spirit I called up is carrying away the whole top of the building with us in it." He looked down again. "The bad news is that this place wasn't built to hold together without the floors below it and bits keep falling off. So we might want to get up to the top before this floor breaks loose."

 

"Can you at least hold it steady?" she asked, bracing herself with a hand on the doorframe to swing at the door again."

 

"Not really."

 

"Great." Nyaya smashed the sword into it again.

 

Letting go of the rail, Ghora darted across, careless of her backswing and produced a scalpel of black magic, which he jammed into the wood of the door.

 

"Are you crazy?"

 

He ignored her and dug into the door in a couple of places with it before crouching down. "Hit it again!"

 

Nyaya stared down at him for a moment and then drove the blade against the lock again. The wood snapped, breaking in a line from her own crack down through the spots where Ghora had stabbed it, and the door swung open. The two stumbled through into a large chamber that took up most of the floor with broken windows of stained glass looking in all directions. A separate stair wrought of iron led up to a gallery and then another spiral stair led up through the roof.

 

Nyaya caught hold of Ghora by the shoulder and half-dragged him towards the stair. The gallery above the stair was the same iron and she thought that it might all be one piece or at least bolted together to the poiint that it was. "Can you get the spirit to hold onto the gallery?" she shouted.

 

He looked up. "I might have to."

 

The frame holding the windows around the chamber snapped.

 

Nyaya flung herself onto bottom of the stairs, pushing Ghora up ahead of her. "Do it, do it, do it!"

 

The floor broke away below her and her feet slipped loose leaving her dangling by both hands from the lowest steps, legs swinging wildly a thousand feet above the City of Dead Flowers.

 

Then the gallery, stairs included, began to tumble lightly and Nyaya's stomach lurched. "Oh craaaaa-"

 

With a lurch, massive claws seized hold of the gallery and she got an impression of vast, house-sized wings flapping above.

 

Ghora clung to the stairs above her and looked down. "Hang on! I'll try to get it to shift it around to bring you up."

 

"Don't get too bloody creative!"

 

Ghora shouted up to the spirit - what else could it be? - and it slowly began to turn the gallery over in its claws until the back of the stairs came up under Nyaya and she slumped onto it.

 

"Ghora?"

 

"Yes?"

 

"Is there any reason I can't sleep now?"

He grinned broadly. "Go ahead, I may join you."

 

She gave him an odd look.

 

"Not like that, but it has been a long couple of days."

 

"Don't you need to... I don't know, keep the spell going?"

 

"Not as long as I tell it where to go."


	12. Ghora

Ghora woke to find a colourful parrot eyeing him speculatively.

 

"Don't even think about it," he warned it, sitting up sharply and dragging the folds of his robes around him. Looking around he realised that he lay upon the metal gallery that had been his impromptu gondola away from City of Dead Flowers, now resting more or less level upon the branches of three tall trees.

 

"Where in Creation am I?" he wondered. "Are we?" he corrected himself, seeing that Nyaya lay at the other end of the gallery, still fast asleep. He didn't begrudge her that - she'd been a stalwart companion after the initial distrust.

 

Then he shook his head. Don't get attached, he reminded himself. Death is the only gift you bring and Whose Whispers Chain will punish us both if I try to be more than an ally of convenience to her.

 

Still, there was no sense in disturbing her much-needed rest while he investigated. Looking down over the gallery he saw that the ground was intimidatingly far below but the trees were fairly evenly spaced out and rooted on firm ground, not rising out of a swamp. Most likely they were in one of the deep, heavily wooded valleys of the Middle Lands. He'd seen no small number of those as he travelled westwards across An Teng in the past and although the river valleys were generally cleared to make room to cultivate rice, cotton and mulberries the upper valleys for the most part remained heavily wooded, too inaccessible for the elephants used by the local population to clear timber.

 

Which raised the question of why he was here at all. He cudgelled his memory: he'd been punch-drunk when he was instructing the spirit but he was fairly sure that he'd told it to take him home not to dump him in the deep forest.

 

Of course, he thought, home would perhaps not have been the wisest of places for him to go, particularly in his exhausted state. Arriving at Salt-Founded Glory unconscious but clearly arriving via mighty sorcery might well have convinced the militia or the Immaculate Order that certain precautions were in order - removing his tongue or his fingers for example. Neither would have suited him.

 

And he blanched paler than his usual pallor at the thought that the spirit might have flown him to the Cold House, had it defined his home thus. While incredibly distant to mortal means, the manse was far easier to reach as the crow flew and he would not put it past the ability of the spirit that he had called up to carry him there given what must - from the angle of the sun - have been twelve hours or more.

 

Perhaps being marooned in an unfamiliar forest was not the worst of fates, he decided. No, matters could be much worse.

 

Alas, having departed the Shadowland, his ability to gather essence had been much reduced and he estimated that he would be hard-pressed to cast more than one spell with what remained to him. Certainly an inconvenience but not one unfamiliar to how he had lived over recent months.

 

The sight of fruit upon one of the nearby trees reminded him that he had not indulged with Nyaya at the Palace of the Lotus and that even so, she would most likely be hungry. Well, a full stomach would cure many ills and despite his sleep, it would be best not to seek great exertion while his body knit itself back together after the battering that it had suffered the previous night.

 

Just by walking along the iron gallery, the little sorcerer was able to pull several pears down and with a little exploration and careful use of branches that could support his slight weight, Ghora managed to obtain a number of avocados and a half-dozen of something that looked like an orange but smelt subtly different.

 

With a sigh he divided up the spoils, leaving half by Nyaya and retreating to the other end of the structure to do some thinking while he ate his share.

 

The stairs down appeared to have gone missing at some point, which was a little disturbing since he rather thought that they'd gone to sleep lying on that part of the structure rather than the gallery proper. Still, a small matter since they'd hardly have reached the ground from this height. While he could probably climb down without too much trouble, he wasn't so sure about Nyaya. Quite a number of branches that would bear him would not bear her weight.

 

And of course, then they'd be wandering around the woods of the Gods only knew where. Which was dangerous enough for him, particularly if Nyaya slept away more of the day.

 

Nope, nope, nope. He'd need a pretty damn good reason to go down into that forest. If it was the same set of trees he was thinking of then the grossly mis-named Forest of Compassion stretched across roughly a third of An Teng and it could take days to find a populated place. So he'd really have to use his last reserves on a Cirrus Skiff to fly them out and hope that it didn't take too long to get his bearings so that they could get back to Salt-Founded Glory.

 

Or would it be best to go to the City of the Steel Lotus? He had rather pointed the nemissary in that direction but if he was right about it having been the Shatterer of Ways attacking them then that plan had already been blown away. Maybe send a warning - it might not be believed but if the deathknight sent his assassin anyway, just to be sure, then it might provide a certain degree of credibility.

 

Well, maybe if there was a means of sending a message. Ghora certainly wasn't going to waste a spell on it.

 

Hmm. Was that... yes, that was the stairs up, which had somehow remained attached, probably because that part of the gallery had ended up between trees. Huh. Well, the top of it would be above most of the branches, which might be far enough to spot a landmark. Not very likely, but possible. It wouldn't hurt to try.

 

Chewing on a mouthful of pear he climbed the stairs and then, for the extra couple of feet of height, he scrambled up onto the rail and balanced there. Trackless forest up the side of one ridge. Trackless forest down the valley into what he thought might be another valley. Trackless forest on the other side of the valley, past the pyramid. Trackless forest trailing up the...

 

Wait. Pyramid?

 

He turned back. Well now.

 

Ghora considered leaving Nyaya to sleep but decided it would be unwise. For better or worse they were comrades now. Instead he began cautiously cutting away the thinnest and highest branches of the trees around them and weaving them into a strong crude rope.

 

E-X-A-L-T-E-D

 

In the end Nyaya didn't wake until the Sun had gone past its apex and was descending towards the Great Western Ocean, somewhere behind the opposite ridge.

 

"Why did you fly us out here?" the woman asked as she munched on the fruit that she'd gratefully accepted a few minutes ago. "I mean, safety through obscurity is one thing..."

 

"That's the interesting thing: I didn't. What with getting hit on the head last night my orders to the spirit must have been a bit confused. But besides being a convenient place to rest and eat, there's another interesting aspect - what looks like a pyramid just down the hill. I don't think it's got anything to do with our current problems but it might be interesting to check out."

 

"Do we really have the time?"

 

"I don't think it'll take that long, and it might be profitable. If nothing else, it's somewhere we can run and hide if this all goes horribly wrong. Never under-estimate the value of a bolthole."

 

"Golden Lord, I hope not. Hiding out here in the jungle with you would be like the worst parts of an afterlife."

 

"Let's try to keep our perspective here," Ghora protested, reminding himself that she really had no idea just how bad an afterlife could get. "I'm sure that there must be some worse fates... although it's hardly my first resort."

 

"As long as we're on the same page on that." She looked at the rope. "Are you sure that that will bear my weight?"

 

"No, but if it snaps you'll get to exactly the same bit of ground you will if it doesn't break. Just faster."

 

"I could break every bone in my body!"

 

"Oh don't be silly, it's unlikely to be more than your legs. And you'll have a surgeon right on hand!"

 

She shook her head. "A surgeon who'll probably think he can fix it by chopping my legs off."

 

"You're carrying too much weight anyway. Losing some will do you good!" He paused. "Or I could make you a splint. I do actually know how to make those."

 

Nyaya gave him a sceptical look.

 

"I do!" Why did everyone assume his only surgical skills were in amputation? Other than his determined advertising of them, that was. With a sigh at how well understood he was - he'd have to work on the mystery side of being a mysterious sorcerer, it seemed, he started knotting the rope to the gallery.

 

"You don't know a lot about knots, do you?" Nyaya observed and brushed him aside to take over. "If I'm trusting my life to a knot then I want to be sure it's done right."

 

"I didn't realise that you were an expert."

 

"I worked my passage from An Teng to Chiaroscuro," she explained.

 

"And this involved lots of knots?"

 

He was amused to see her face redden. "Not like that, you bastard! I worked as a sailor!"

 

"I'm not really familiar with the profession, but I suppose that there'd be a lot of ropes involved now that I think about." He paused. "What did you think I meant?"

 

She made a rude gesture. "Now let me work. My life's on the line so I want this to be perfect."

 

To test the rope, Ghora climbed down it first and when it failed to break, Nyaya nervously climbed onto it and made an erratic descent, slipping and sliding at times but always catching herself after a few feet. Ghora eyed the bottom of the rope slowly descending, concluded that the rope was stretching and prudently stepped aside so as not to be below if things went wrong.

 

At it happened, the rope did part but not until Nyaya was only a couple of feet off the forest floor. She landed on both feet and then fell back on her rump, a disgruntled look on her face as most of the rest of the rope slithered down in front of her. "Don't take up rope-making," she advised Ghora.

 

"I wasn't planning to." He pointed through the jungle. "Unless I've gotten turned around, we should walk in that direction."

 

E-X-A-L-T-E-D

 

As it turned out, he'd not been turned around and less than an hour's walking - which would have been about a quarter as long without needing Nyaya to hack her way through the bushes - they reached the edge of the pyramid.

 

"You know, I think we've been fighting our way through what used to be farmland or something similar," Ghora noted. "The bushes are what's grown up since it stopped being cultivated and the forest began reclaiming it." He glanced around. "Actually, half the trees could have grown since it was abandoned if the timing is what I think it is?"

 

"The Great Contagion?"

 

"Well it seems likely." He scrambled up the side onto the first level, which was about level with Nyaya's head - and would have had more clearance if she wasn't standing on several centuries worth of debris. "And unless my guess, this is a manse... with some other building over there. Smaller and it looks mostly overgrown."

 

"I'd have thought that someone would have traced down a manse. They're supposed to be important, after all."

 

"That's harder than you might think," Ghora explained to her. "Without the hearthstone there's no easy way to trace a manse if you don’t know where it is. Hard ways, yes, but after the great contagion then the resources probably weren’t available and it was just forgotten about."

 

"So we got lucky?"

 

"Maybe. I wish I could remember exactly what I ordered the spirit to do."

 

"So is it safe?"

 

"Well I doubt that there's anyone here, but there could be automatons... not that likely unless it was abandoned a long time before the Contagion. On the whole, the Shogunate didn't have much time for those."

 

"Why not?" Nyaya asked.

 

He shrugged. "Most of them were created by the Anathema to serve them. I think they had some good reasons to doubt who the automatons would obey if it came to a pinch. Let's go have a look at the other building first," he added, scrambling down from the manse.

 

"What? I'd have thought that you'd be panting to get into the Manse as soon as possible."

 

"All in good time. Manses I know about, but I'm not sure what that is and I'm curious."

 

It took Nyaya's sword again to chop through the undergrowth - at this rate it would need to be sharpened before she used it for anything else - to find a small round building with five pillars around it and no obvious door.

 

"What would this be for?"

 

Ghora shook his head. "I think it might be a tomb," he answered, running one hand across the carvings on the wall. "Or the entrance to one."

 

"And suddenly your interest makes perfect sense."

 

He grinned. "Maybe you're right. I wonder who's buried here." Walking around the edge he traced lettering and artwork. "Someone important, someone dangerous... someone whose ghost they had a strong fear of and wished to appease."

 

Stepping back he looked at the carved relief and then pointed at his finger at the plants covering the upper half. "Cut those down," he ordered, a sinking feeling in his stomach.

 

"This had better be important," she muttered but with a moment of chopping she cleared away the most obscuring vines. "Good enough?"

 

Ghora stared up at the face looking down at him from the top of the wall. Carved centuries before, it was still clearly recognisable, a face that yanked upon his guts and tore at his heart.

 

A face that he'd never seen before in his life.

 

Never seen before in this life.

 

Carved into the woman's brow was a crescent moon.

 

"Is that what I think it is?" asked Nyaya quietly.

 

"If you think we're standing outside the tomb of one of the Silver Anathema, then yes, it is exactly what you think it is." He walked around it to examine the building from another angle but his mind was still caught on that face. He was quite sure he hadn't met the woman - or at least if he had, not memorably enough that he could place her. But for her face to provoke this reaction...

 

Could it be that this was a memory from a past life, before lethe had swept his soul clean for this life? It was rare, but rumour and legend suggested that some memories - faint reflections of the most intense experiences - might be carried from life to life. Ghora had always dismissed this as wishful thinking but...

 

Well maybe. He felt a sudden urge to try summoning the woman's ghost but fought it down. He had no way of knowing if she was a ghost - she must have been dead for centuries.

 

"Do you want to go in?" asked Nyaya from behind him.

 

"I do," he admitted. There might be answers within. "But it's not a good idea. There will no doubt be layers of traps and other security that we're not prepared or equipped with."

 

"Surprisingly sensible. The manse then?"

 

"Yes, the manse," he agreed and they retraced their steps towards the pyramid.

 

Unlike the Palace of the Lotus, this had an entrance at ground level and the doors had been left intact and closed. Locked in fact, although that didn't stop the two of them for long as the wooden frame of the door had almost rotted away and collapsed with a couple of good kicks by Nyaya.

 

The air inside had a slightly unpleasent odour - probably the result of being sealed away for so long, Ghora thought, but he agreed whioleheartedly with Nyaya's notion of carrying a torch and resolved to flee frantically for the entrance if the thing went out. Posionous and/or choking vapours would hardly be out of place as a security measure in such a place.

 

What they found was almost disappointingly mundane - four rooms, one in each corner of the pyramid that appeared to have been a family home although the stove was apparently of such a remarkable nature to Nyaya that she declared her intent to lay claim and take it back to her family if she managed to get out of the current mess and stay in favourable terms with them.

 

There were stairs however and these led up to what Ghora had been looking for: the hearthstone chamber. The room - with its pointed ceiling and windows in all four directions - practically thummed with essence and seemed to give a satisfied sigh when Ghora removed a small gemstone from the lantern-like apparatus that dangled from the ceiling.

 

But perhaps that was just him sighing as he attuned himself to the flow of essence through the Manse. It was, as he had hoped, unclaimed. And the gem - the hearthstone - would provide him with a permanent connection to it if he could find a suitable artifact to fit it into. His scalpels wouldn't do - too small by far - but the advantages would be astounding: with a constant flow of essence he would be able to replenish his reserves as easily as any of the Terrestrial Exalted.

 

It was the penalty of having pledged himself to the Neverborn: in the Underworld and even Shadowlands, he could gather and use essence with an almost unrivalled freedom, but Creation was barren by comparison. Even mortals found the dragonlines more useful than he. But a manse would change that. No more hoarding every mote possible...

 

"Ghora?"

 

He turned to Nyaya. "We should remain here overnight and leave tomorrow. It would be foolish to fly around when we don't know where we are and can't see any landmarks."

 

She nodded. "Maybe you're right. And we'll be more sheltered if we sleep up here. Who knows what might come hunting out there - it could be tiger country."

 

"Good thinking." Ghora smirked slightly. "You'd better block the door in case something comes through and eats you in the night."

 

"How about you prop them shut? They’ll have a morsel to eat and probably conclude anyone else here will be as stringy and full of bones as you."


	13. Nyaya

Salt-Founded Glory was quite impressive from a distance, Nyaya noted, having not been in any condition to observe it as they departed two days previously. It didn’t compare well to the City of Dead Flowers in terms of size but it was a bustling city, a living city, and that made all the difference.

 

It was good to be home, even when home was likely to try to kill her.

"So do you see the house we’re looking for?" Ghora asked patiently from where he stood behind her on the cloud.

 

"I think so. It’s odd to see it all from this angle, but that’s the Temple of the Golden Lord." She pointed at the tower. "And the house was in that direction." Tracing the line of the street with a pointing finger helped. "So that would make it… one of those three. I can’t tell which one from this high."

 

She felt Ghora move behind her – close behind her – and then he spoke, mouth right by her ear. (He must be looking along my arm to get the same view, she realised). "Just to the right of the buildings with the grey slate roofs?"

 

"It could be the first of them, or one of the two to the left. They’ve got the same layouts."

 

"Really?" He leaned forwards, putting his chin on her shoulder. "Oh. Wrong street. I see them now. Right, let’s get down there."

 

"I thought that we were going to land outside Salt-Founded Glory and walk there – you know, discreetly?"

"Given that there’s probably a price on our heads right now, I’m pretty sure we’d be arrested as soon as we walked up to the city gates. They’d need to have smoked enough hemp to kill an elephant to mistake me for anyone but me: how many people my height and size do you think that there are?"

 

"They don’t know you’re a Djala…"

 

"What do you want to do, put on a swanky dress and walk in with a collar around my neck?"

 

Nyaya sighed. What a pain he was. Didn’t he have more to worry about with the Exalted likely to kill him if they realised he was some kind of quasi-anathema? "Don’t be daft – I’d look pretty silly in a fancy dress, anyway. I’m just saying we’re going to draw trouble like moths to a flame if you just fly us down there."

 

He looked amused by that. "Once we’ve investigated this place we’re planning on abducting one of the dowager’s ladies-in-waiting and interrogating her. How does any of that plan sound like ‘avoiding trouble’?"

 

"If you have to go somewhere in a thunderstorm, do you go via rooftops wearing a copper helmet?"

 

The little sorcerer looked amused. "Says the woman wearing metal armour and half a mile above ground level." He gestured and the cloud moved through the sky. "I’ll take us across to look at that street from the other side, maybe you can pick out the right one from that angle."

 

Figures. He’s got power so he figures he can ignore the objections of a mere mortal. "No."

 

"What?"

 

"I think we need to establish something: you’re not going to manage this without me. I’m the one that will recognise the building. Hells, I’m the one who’s met Nirvasana – or the woman who claimed to be Nirvasana, at least. You need me and that means you’d damn well better listen to what I say."

 

Ghora’s eyes narrowed dangerously. "Alright, I’m listening."

 

"We need to draw attention, I’m with you on that. The odds are good that if we surface then the nemissary will come after us – I hope so because we’re the only bait that we have. But we need the right sort of attention, not the wrong sort and having half the militia swarm us would be the wrong sort of attention."

 

She raised her hand quickly to forestall comment. "I’m sure that you can handle them very easily, but slaughtering them escalates this and isn’t the sort of thing that their families will forgive, even if we are innocent of Mnemon Dhana’s death."

 

There was a long pause. "And you plan to leave here alongside them, yes?" Ghora observed.

 

"You don’t?"

 

"One way or another I think I’ve worn out my welcome here in Salt-Founded Glory." He gestured for the cloud to move onwards. "Let’s go see if we can pinpoint the right building. I’ll think about what you’ve said."

 

"Fine." She watched the buildings of Salt-Founded Glory move below them. "Alright, I see it," she told him, about to give him the directions and then paused. "So do you have any ideas?"

 

The sorcerer sighed. "You’re not going to give up on this, are you?"

 

Nyaya held back a grin. "Nope."

 

"Fine then. I can cast a spell on you to make you look like anyone I can imagine. That way you can just walk through the gates without anyone recognising you. The only snag is it that it will take me or another sorcerer to remove the spell."

 

"Really?"

 

"It’s not that grand a spell."

 

"No, seriously. You have access to a spell like that and you’re living in a shack on the docks? Why aren’t you charging an obol a day to cast it on one of the nobility?"

 

"…that honestly hadn’t occurred to me. You think they’d pay that much?"

 

"You’re right. Two obols, easily."

 

Ghora palmed his face. "Nyaya, you’re beginning to grow on me. For your own sake, quit that."

 

E-X-A-L-T-E-D

 

"Right," Ghora told her as he completed the spell. "I’m pretty sure no one in An Teng will have come across the face you’re wearing."

 

Nyaya nodded. "So what do I look like?" There was no still water in the grove they were using that she could see a reflection in, much less a mirror.

 

"Oh, a woman I once knew. You might need to tighten up your clothes a bit," he added with a smirk.

 

With a huff, Nyaya went ahead and did that. She could at least check her figure and it was a lot slimmer than she was used to. Her knee still hurt if she put too much weight on it though, so it was only an illusion of sorts. "So if we get split up, I’ll need another sorcerer to take this off."

 

"No, it’s quite easy. It’ll come off if you concentrate on looking like your ordinary self."

 

"What!? You told me…!"

 

"I lied."

 

Nyaya decided, on reflection, not to smack him over the head with the hilt of her sword. It was a tough decision though. "Why?"

 

"I figured it might scare you off from this."

 

"Figures," she grumbled. "You’re kind of a jerk, you know."

 

"Thank you!"

 

What sort of person takes that as a compliment? she wondered. Even when she was with a mercenary company, where she’d met quite a number of abrasive personalities, Nyara had never encountered someone who was openly pleased when he upset someone.

 

"Fine, so I’ll pretend to be a wandering swordswoman, on a pilgrimage to the Golden Lord’s shrine at the Pinnacle of Mercy. That shouldn’t make anyone suspicious."

 

"You don’t really look like a swordswoman," Ghora warned her. "Not enough scars and too skinny."

 

"I’m clearly too good a swordswoman to have any scars," she snapped. "How are you going to get into Salt-Founded Glory?"

 

"Don’t worry about me, I’ll manage," he assured her. "I’ll meet you at the town house you pointed out when the sun is at its zenith."

 

"Fine. If I’m not there it’s because I looked too suspicious and I’ve gone to pray to the Golden Lord."

 

"Or you’ve been identified, captured and are protesting your innocence to Judge Jaja."

 

"That is also possible," she admitted.

 

Walking away from the grove she wondered if it was the same one Dhana had met with the representative of the Silver Prince. It was possible but there were a lot of groves of trees around Salt-Founded Glory.

 

It would probably take her around an hour to walk to the city gates from here, which meant she could get there before the day warmed up, probably. In light of how warm the unfamiliar metal armour would get in the sun that was quite a decent incentive.

 

By the time she reached the gates, she’d actually begun to build up a sweat from the unaccustomed weight of the armour and just wanted to get inside and out of the shade. Hopefully the guards would be slack and not pay much attention.

 

The first thing that she noticed was that instead of the usual two guards at the gate, drawn from the permanent militia like Constable Kanuna, there were four and she recognised them all as part-timers like herself.

 

I guess that the militia have all been called up after the last few days.

 

The second thing that she noticed was that they had all noticed her. Barah, Terah and Chaudah were pretending to examine the people entering and leaving the city, but they all kept sneaking looks down the road towards her. Egyarah, the only woman amongst them, didn’t even pretend. She just eyeballed Nyaya and switched her spread-the-water knife from hand to hand.

 

Blast it have they guessed who I am? she wondered. It was too late to turn around and run for it, so best to brazen it out and hope that the spell was holding.

 

Chaudah nudged Barah forward as Nyaya reached the head of the short line. "Ah…" he began, lowering his gaze slightly and avoiding her eyes. "What’s your business in Salt-Founded Glory?"

 

"I’m just passing through." Her voice shouldn’t give away anything, the spell had even erased her Tengese accent in favour of something from further east. "I may take some work to cover bills."

 

"What sort of work?" Egyarah asked in a challenging tone.

 

Reaching for her sword would probably not be the most sensible thing to do when outnumbered by potentially panicky militia. Instead she ran one finger across the scale armour that descended down her thighs. "Guard work."

 

Egyarah nodded grudgingly.

 

Chaudah leant forwards, one hand on Barah’s shoulder. "So what’s your name?" he leered.

 

"Nunaya," she said. Okay, so this woman that Ghora had disguised her as was apparently good-looking enough to meet Chaudah’s standards for interest. Possibly, she realised, the standards of the other two men as well.

 

"Nice name."

 

"It’s short for ‘none of your business’."

 

"Owww!" the militia man protested with a laugh, waving his hand with a burn. "You got me."

 

Even Egyarah chuckled slightly and Terah shook his head. "Let it go, Chaudah." The older man gave Nyaya a frankly admiring look that brought a hint of colour to her cheeks. "I have to warn you, ma’am, you may need more security than that sword. There have been two confirmed demon sightings this week and a high profile murder. The city’s on edge. That may serve you well looking for guard work, but there are also going to be a lot of… twitchy people."

 

She nodded. "Thanks for the tip."

 

As she walked through, she heard Chaudah: "Wow, you got her blushing. What’s your secret, Terah? Barah needs to know, the poor innocent."

 

"Well basically," the older guard noted, "I have you around to make me look good by comparison."

 

Nyaya wasn’t free of looks as she walked through the streets. Just how good looking was the face she was wearing? There was an open square ahead, with a fountain that could be made to spout water from stylised swans if someone important was parading around. Pausing to sit on the edge, she half-drew her sword and polished the exposed blade with her sleeve until between that and the sun she could get a bleary image but not enough to be certain.

 

She shivered and looked around. She was drawing far more attention than she was used to.

 

Pretty enough to be noticed, she guessed. If there were Dragonblooded around – or even unexalted dynasts - then that could be dangerous. Hopefully none had arrived yet to deal with the aftermath of Mnemon Dhana’s murder. That could be a problem.

 

Rising to her feet, Nyaya hurried on towards the temple. She was going to draw eyes anyway so pushing herself as fast as her bad knee would allow wasn’t going to make her more obvious. It was unlikely that anyone would bother her once she was there.

 

Even so, walking through Salt-Founded Glory was a trial. Everything was the same… except that there was an undertone of fear at what would happen next. No Great House would brush off the murder of one of their number, even one who was not Exalted, and whatever they demanded the Prince would grant.

 

And worse, she guessed. There might be no demand, simply an example made. Two demons had unleashed this disaster but Mnemon was said to be without peer as a sorceress. She could unleash enough demons to destroy the city and the only complaint would be the satrap looking at his tax receipts.

 

No one hindered Nyaya but it wasn’t until she was almost at the Temple of the Golden Lord that she realised that the most disturbing looks aimed at her were not lust. It was suspicion of her as a foreigner.

 

And I thought that it was bad with my own face? she wondered. I had no idea at all.

 

It was tempting simply to be rid of the disguise now and take her chances. There weren’t militia on every corner. Still, she’d surely be recognised and someone would remember to tell a Constable…

 

Nyaya had actually gone past the townhouse to reach the temple when she saw an oncoming party – a lady of the nobility and her attendants. Nirvasana herself. Nyaya moved aside to let them pass, lowering her head slightly – partly in a show of respect but mostly to hide her expression. Her face might not be familiar to the Lady in Waiting but she didn’t trust it not to betray her feelings about the other woman.

 

Nirvasana looked at her – almost everyone had – but only for a second and then she flicked her eyes away dismissively. The group entered the gates to the house and left Nyaya’s sight.

 

Well that’s interesting.

 

And then her eyes widened as she saw someone else coming along the same roads. Someone moving with an awkward stride that didn’t match the body language she’d expect from that well-remembered face.

 

Kanuna – or whoever was inhabiting his body – walked up to the townhouse, glanced with apparent indifference through the gates and then walked past, turning sharply into the alley just beyond the wall.

 

Maybe today’s my lucky day. Nyaya waited for her pounding heartbeat to settle and then followed Kanuna into the alley.

 

The alleyway was a narrow one, existing more to provide separation between the houses to either side than for any sort of access, It was obvious from the scent and from the debris under her sandals that years – if not generations – of occupants and their servants had been in the habit of dumping household waste into it rather than selling it to the various collectors.

 

The fences were high enough to block the sun except at the height of the day and it took a moment for Nyaya’s eyes to adjust to the lack of light. Once they did she saw no sign of Kanuna.

 

He might have reached a corner, Nyaya thought, or perhaps clambered over one of the fences. She made an effort to be quiet as she made her way along the alley – partly to avoid notice but more so that she could listen for anyone else’s signs of movement. After all, if she was challenged she could simply claim to be a lost foreigner.

 

When she reached the other end she found that there was nowhere to go. While it appeared that there was a T-junction at the far end, where the alley ran up against the back of another house, thick and thorny bushes had grown up preventing any actual progress left or right.

 

So much for going on. Nyaya retraced her steps, squinting to try to find hand- or footholds on the fences that might reveal where Kanuna might have climbed. It was diffcult in the shadows and she was reduced to running her hands over the bamboo in order to supplement her eyes.

 

If she hadn’t however, she probably wouldn’t have found a few threads caught between two of the thick bamboo stalks that made up the fence. Not caught on the edge, as if someone had brushed against them, but actually between them. Someone had evidently gone through them somehow and – holding them out to catch the little light available – she thought that they matched the colour of those in Kanuna’s cloak.

 

Score one for the tailor’s daughter, she thought proudly and started feeling around for a loose place where this part of the fence might be moved aside to let someone pass.

 

Now that she knew what she was looking for it was simple enough for her to discover that a section of the fence could be lifted, creating a gap that although narrow was certainly wide enough for a thin man like Kanuna to pass through, even in armour or cloak although it might have been a tight squeeze, explaining how the cloak had caught on the edge. Nyaya doubted for a moment if she could follow but then remembered that her body was currently that of a far slimmer woman than her. Would the illusion be convincing enough to allow her to get her gut through the narrow gap?

 

It seemed it was so – a remarkably disguise and one that seemed to confound even Creation. With all that, Nyaya had to wonder why Ghora couldn’t have made it convincing enough to spare her leg pains. Then again, she’d never asked him to.

 

"He’d probably just want to cut my leg off entirely," she murmured aloud and then clasped her hands over her mouth.

 

Fortunately it did not appear that anyone had overheard her. In fact, despite seeing Nirvasana and several servants enter, there was no one in view at all. Crossing the rear yard quickly, Nyaya leant against the back wall below one of the windows and listened. No voices could be heard and she stood on tip-toes to look inside. The room was empty, nor could she hear voices or footsteps elsewhere in the house.

 

Strange as it was, it at least gave Nyaya a chance to investigate more closely and she went to the rear door, moving aside the curtain across it and walking inside on bare feet – wary that her sandals might slap too loudly on the boards she removed them and tucked them inside of her belt rather than placing them on the rack by the door. There was no sense risking someone finding them and if she had to flee she’d want to have them quickly to hand.

 

Room by room, Nyaya walked through the apparently deserted house. Most of the rooms were all but derelict – bare of furniture and so thick with spider webs that if the Prince ever wanted the place cleaned for use he’d probably need to send militia to protect the cleaning staff. Thinking of the Anuhle, Nyaya winced and gave the spiders a wide berth.

 

Only the wing that she had entered before had been cleaned up and once she was sure that the room from last time was absent, Nyaya tried the stairs cautiously. One creak here could echo alarmingly and alert anyone in the house (if there was anyone, which seemed increasingly unlikely) to her presence.

 

Despite one alarming moment, she reached the top of the stairs and found that the rooms were as clean as the rest of the wing and although sparsely furnished, there were blankets and small chests suitable for clothes. Whatever Nirvasana might have said, the rooms up here were ready for guests if they didn’t house them already.

 

The room at the end, looking out from the front of the house was better furnished than most, with a full bed that had obviously been slept in – and perhaps home to other activities too, judging by the smell of the sheets. Most remarkably, however, there was a screen set up to mask part of the room that contained two large chests of clothes and a full length mirror. Nyaya stopped before the latter, totally dumbstruck.

 

That stupid sorcerer hadn’t changed her appearance to look safely anonymous! He’d made her the most beautiful woman in the South! Perhaps the most beautiful in all Creation! No wonder practically every man that she’d passed had watched her and women had been glaring at her like daggers!

 

"Oh that bloody fool," Nyaya muttered. She’d be instantly recognisable like this. If anyone realised who she was behind this disguise, it’d be possible to retrace her steps through every street of the city she’d gone up. No one would forget this woman!

 

She was more than half-tempted to try to get rid of the illusion before it got her into more trouble but finally decided against it. She’d already taken a risk entering the house without waiting for Ghora. If she wound up having to flee Salt-Founded Glory alone then the disguise - and a strategically timed removal of it – might be invaluable.

 

Instead she started back towards the steps only to hear feet upon the stairs. Near the top unless she was badly mistaken.

 

Nyaya darted behind the shelter of the screen. With a bit of luck whoever was coming up was going to one of the other rooms, but even if they came here they would only notice her if they actually came around the screen. Of course if this was Nirvasana coming to get changed then she was right out of luck, but in that case hiding would hardly make the case worse. She ducked her head, gripped the hilt of her sword and prayed silently for delieverance.

 

The door to the chamber swung open, dispelling at least part of the hope.

 

"I have it in here, Constable," Nirvasana said in an patient voice. "It seemed the sort of thing to be kept safe after all."

 

Constable?

 

Almost, Nyaya looked around the screen to see if she was right but she narrowly managed to restrain herself.

 

Her restraint was rewarded when a rasping voice – barely recognisable as Kanuna’s – answered the lady in waiting: "The militia will take care of that from now on, milady."

 

"Oh yes, I know you’ve done such a good job of protecting Mnemon Dhana," said Nirvasana sweetly. Nyaya recognised the venom hidden behind the tone, and the irony that the lady in waiting must have missed, saying that to the dynast’s murderer. "Now wait here."

 

Both sets of footsteps continued.

 

"I said wait," snapped Nirvasana. "Have you no concept of manners? No gentleman would enter a lady’s boudoir."

 

Yet more evidence that this isn’t really Kanuna, if I still had doubts, Nyaya concluded. He’d not be this crude, too many of his ambitions rest on crawling up into the favours of his social superiors to risk offending someone with Nirvasana’s connections.

 

Perhaps this reprimand carried weight though, for only the lady in waiting’s footsteps continued up to the screen. Nyaya winced and braced herself for the inevitable. Instead of walking around the screen however, Nirvasana walked past the end and stopped with her back to Nyaya, opening a small casket.

 

"I have it here," she reported, producing the familiar shape of the obol-like token. And then she turned to go and came face to face with Nyaya.

 

"Assassin!" she screamed.


	14. Ghora

The scream from inside the building that Nyaya had directed him to got Ghora’s attention. He wasn’t sure what exactly what was being screamed – he wasn’t all that close – but there was no doubt that a woman had got a considerable surprise inside and probably not one that she was happy about.

 

The little sorcerer was far from the only one to notice it of course – there were at least a dozen people on the street outside the house, just passing by and with the possible of a geriatric who probably shouldn’t be allowed out on his own, they must have heard it just as clearly as Ghora had.

 

Confirming his generally low opinion of people who were alive and not Djala (and the latter was admittedly negotiable even if he’d rather be flogged than admit it), even those that didn’t hasten their pace away from the house looked nervously at each other and the front gate rather than investigating.

 

"Well if they’re going to provide me with a perfectly good distraction," he murmured and scampered from the alley he was lurking at into the one across the street and conveniently next to the house in question. No one looked twice at the little urchin with the ragged shirt and kilt, face shaded by a ‘hat’ that had evidently started life as a reed basket, but if they had then the white face paint he’d slathered on should hide the black patches of skin around his eyes that marked him as a Djala.

 

As soon as he was in the shadows of the alley he jumped up, kicking off from the house’s fence to rebound off the opposite fence with enough momentum that he was able to catch hold of the top of the bamboo stalks and pull himself up. Taking a deep breath, Ghora crouched upon the top of the fence and exhaled sharply as he straightened them sharply and leapt across the yard to the nearest wing of the house. He’d misjudged the distance slightly and his fingers didn’t quite reach the edge of the eaves but he’d aimed for a window and they did seize upon the top of the frame, letting him swing down against the blinds that covered it, pushing it back so that he could drop to the floor, a scalpel in each hand.

 

It was a good, if admittedly not flawless, entry and he’d no doubt have surprised anyone lurking within. Except that no one was.

 

Oh well, he wasn’t here to show off anyway. It would just have been a nice bonus.

 

He was leaving footprints in the dusty floor, to join another set of rather larger footprints. Looks as if someone else has been sneaking around here, he mused. If anyone’s offering odds that it’s not a certain militiawoman failing to respect our scheduled rendezvous, then they’re a chicken ready for the plucking. And anyone even looking into the room was bound to see those footprints. Ghora headed for the door, stepping as neatly as he could within Nyaya’s footprints even if it meant he had to stretch his legs out to match her strides. There would be absolutely no point in advertising the presence of a second intruder.

 

The footsteps led through this wing but Ghora saw that they doubled back and into the main body of the house – and he could hear soft voices from that direction - so he skipped from one trail to the other and headed that way cautiously.

 

The central section of the house, with a high-roofed atrium behind what he thought was the main door – too large to be opened except for ceremonial exits and entrances – was quiet but when he reached the door there was a crashing sound.

 

Dropping to his knees, Ghora peered under the door and saw the bottom of a flight of stairs, with two people struggling at the bottom. It wasn’t clear with the lack of lighting, but from the dazed way that the slighter of the two was moving it seemed that they’d tumbled down the stairs and were now continuing their battle on the floor.

 

While he hesitated over how to deal with this, the larger of the two pinned the other and Ghora got a look at his face. Kanuna, although there was a bloody wound across his face and one eye-socket was entirely empty.

 

The nemissary wearing the dead man’s body hoisted up his prey and Ghora saw Star of Dirt and Dusk’s face again. Well, how likely had it been that anyone but Nyaya would be fighting him?

 

With a sigh he pushed the door open and sauntered through, tucking his scalpels out of sight. He could make a fight of this if he wanted and honestly he couldn’t see many ways that they turned out well. Banishing or destroying the nemissary wouldn’t get any information of him.

 

"You know," he warned the nemissary. "That’s Eye and Seven Despair’s favorite concubine that you’re strangling. I’d think twice about offending a Deathlord as petty and vengeful as he, were I you."

 

"I thaink you for the warning," the nemissary hissed, releasing his grip upon Nyaya’s throat… but only slightly. "I take it that you’re his agent in this area that my captain informed me of."

 

Captain? Ghora thought and then realised that he must mean Shatterer of Ways. He’d heard that the First and Forsaken Lion assigned rank and military position to all his servants, no matter how minor. It would be just like a nemissary to couch their subordination to a deathknight in terms of military structure rather than admit that the Deathlord’s newest servants had ecliped them in both power and flexibility.

 

"I may be, yes," he agreed with a slight nod.

 

Someone cleared their throat at the top of the steps. "Constable," the richly dressed woman demanded. "Why aren’t you dealing with this intruder rather than engaging in discourse with this…" her eyes widened. "That is no child! It must be the rogue sorcerer!"

 

Ghora bowed rather more deeply towards her. "Lady Nirvasana, I presume."

 

"You presume correctly," she said and reached out to yank at a cord that stretched from the floor to the ceiling at the top of the stairs. A bell rang elsewhere in the house – below, Ghora thought. "And if the Constable won’t do his duty then my servants will take out this trash."

 

"Constable Kanuna has been dead for two days," Nyaya managed to get out, past the hand still closed upon her throat.

 

"Quite," agreed Ghora. "Do you usually entertain the walking dead here, Lady Nirvasana?" Then he jumped for where Nyaya’s sword had fallen, well clear of the struggling pair and lifted it. The heavy blade should have been awkward for a man his size but he didn’t find it a problem. "And as for taking out the trash, you may find that harder than it seems."

 

He lunged for the nemissary, who jerked Nyaya around to use her as a shield. The dead man didn’t expect Ghora to release the spell however and she suddenly grew from a slim, delicate young woman into the more grizzled and much heavier shape of Nyaya, something that left the Constable’s body off-balance.

 

Ghora darted past them both and swung the blade backwards, chopping at the body’s hamstrings. With a shout of anger the nemissary stumbled, fingers clawing tighter at Nyaya’s throat.

 

Without hesitation, Ghora brought the sword up, wielding the back-edge like a bludgeon and smashing the elbow of the arm that held Nyaya into splinters. She tumbled away, gasping for breath just as four servants burst into the room. None wore armour or had the look of regular soldiers but they held heavy blades much like that which Ghora was holding, or on the the case of one of them a wood-axe that would probably also be fit to smash a skull if put to the purpose. With the nemissary laid out on the ground like a corpse, Ghora guessed that it’s skull wasn’t one of the top two possible targets right now.

 

"Drop your weapons," Nirvasana offered. "And we may avoid more bloodshed."

 

"I’m more or less neutral on that," Ghora told her although he did dispose of the sword he held – by throwing it so that the hilt landed right next to Nyaya’s hands. "And I have a burning curiousity about certain questions that you can answer for me, so just giving up at this point isn’t really all that appealing to me."

 

"And what questions would those be?"

 

"Well let’s start with: did you summon the demons yourself or do you have someone else do that for you?"

 

To her credit, Nirvasana gave away almost nothing at the shot in the dark – Ghora himself almost missed the faint flicker of annoyance before she uttered the innocent: "I have no idea how you think I’ve anything to do with that." But even in the dark, he could see her well enough that the slight expression practically screamed that he’d caught her.

 

"Well it is just a little too convenient that you’d have been watching the Anuhle attacking him. It wasn’t exactly the proper street for a proper young lady to be roaming at that time of night. You didn’t lose it did you? The jade alone is worth a good bit, even if not face value…"

 

Ah, it was in her pocket.

 

"But I’m getting away from the point," he blathered. "Do you summon it downstairs or do you have some poor saps do it for you."

 

Nirvasana took one step down the stairs. "Restrain them," she ordered her servants. "We’ll see what Judge Jaja thinks of the sorcerer’s transparent attempt to pin the blame for his murder of Mnemon Dhana on me."

 

In fairness to the servants, they really did try, but he ducked under their hands and tripped one into the nemissary, which didn’t react well to having the woman land on him – Ghora wasn’t sure if they felt pain from the bodies they rode but they certainly didn’t enjoy having someone crash into them. Dropping his soulsteel scalpel into his hand, the Djala slashed at the knee of the axe-wielding man and deprived him of the weapon.

 

"Come on," he called to Nyaya, who was climbing to her feet, fending off the last servant with her sword. "I feel a burning need to see what Lady Nirvasana here is hiding in the basement."

 

The two of them backed up, using their weapons to keep the servants from jumping them.

 

With a roar, the nemissary sprang to his feet and flung the servant upon him clean across the room towards them. Without hesitation, Nyaya swung her sword, hard and with both hands. Blood sprayed across them both as the sword bit deep into the unfortunate servant.

 

"Give me the coin!" Kanuna’s body roared up the stairs to Nirvasana."Give me the damn token and I can leave you and the midget to your own devices."

 

An instant later, the nemissary was pinned to the wall opposite the stairs, a long curved sword driven directly through him. He clutched fruitlessly at the weapon and Ghora could have sworn that he saw real pain on its stolen face. The blade of the sword was green – but not that of jade, more akin to aged bronze, and a vapour steamed off the back-edge. Nirvasana twisted the blade in the possessed body’s gut and then looked aside. "Ah, Nyaya," she said ruefully, "I thought that it might be you. I would say ‘now I have to kill you’…"

 

"I kind of got that message," the woman noted.

 

Ghora studied the blade – easily a match in workmanship for any daiklave he’d ever seen in the hands of the Exalted or of a deathknight and grimaced. "You’re not human," he concluded. "You’re not human at all."

 

"Oh if you prick me, I shall bleed," promised Nirvasana. Then she withdrew the blade from the stricken Kanuna and decapitated him with a casual, backhanded cut. "Of course, that’s harder than you might imagine."

 

"And what might you bleed…" Ghora looked over at Nyaya. "I have a cunning plan: run."

He had time to notice while backing out of the room that the three surviving servants had thrown themselves well outside of Nirvasana’s path rather than trying to help her. That probably wasn’t a good sign.

 

As well organised retreats went, the fact that Nyara ran for the front door and he went for the back strongly suggested that they needed to work on their co-ordination. Ghora still thought that the basic plan had merit on the grounds that Nirvasana exploded out of the door, running faster than any mortal should. Even worse, she was gaining on him, not on Nyaya.

 

That wasn’t an entirely selfish thought on his part. Granted, it was mostly selfish – if someone absolutely had to get shish-kebabed on that sword then he would cheerfully pick almost anyone but himself for the privilege – but part of his thinking was that if the scary whatever-the-hell-lady was chasing Nyaya then he’d have time to cast a spell, something that would turn the tide.

 

And he’d really prefer that his only ally in this situation didn’t get skewered either, as long as it didn’t mean that he did.

 

"’Erry!" Nirvasana shrieked, pointing back at Nyaya. "Kill!"

 

"Oh bloody hell," Ghora shouted as he ran around the back of the grand staircase – he wasn’t going to beat Nirvasana on a straight run so his only chance of staying ahead of her was to hope he could corner faster than she could – as an Erymanthoi that looked even meaner than Lalaca’s bodygyuard materialized and went after the woman. Running out the other side of the stairs he flattened himself against the side of them and stretched out the axe right below ankle height.

 

Nirvasana rounded the corner at a run and the axe-shaft intercepted her ankle. Neither really enjoyed the encounter – the axe because its sturdy wooden shaft was now fit for nothing but kindling and Nirvasana because she spectacularly introduced her chin to a good length of the floor and bit her tongue in the process. She was literally spitting blood when she finished her slide.

 

At the far end of the room, the Erymanthoi had reached the door before Nyaya had, causing her to retreat backwards. This, of course, put her right in the path of Nirvasana as she scrambled to her feet.

 

The two women squared off for a moment, a stand-off that couldn’t last longer than it would take for the Erymanthoi to catch up with Nyaya. That interval, however, was just long enough for Ghora to jump onto Nirvasana’s back and place a scalpel edge against her throat. "Call it off," he demanded. "Or I’ll take your head off."

 

"With that little knife?" asked Nirvasana sceptically, but she raised on hand to signal the demon to halt.

 

"If I can take a man’s leg off with this, I’m sure I can do the same to a neck." He looked up at Nyaya. "I think I already told you the plan, get on with it."

 

With a nervous look at Nirvasana the militiawoman skirted around the Erymanthoi and darted out of the room and the house.

 

Nirvasana’s servants entered the room one at a time. Their mistress rolled her eyes to come as close as she could to looking at Ghora. "And now what, little worm? You know she won’t get far and if you slit my throat you’ll be dead before you can shape a spell."

 

"Yeah, I came to about the same conclusion." He relaxed just a hair. "Killing you right now doesn’t get me the answers that I need." Then he moved the scalpel sharply and leapt away.

 

It took a moment for Nirvasana to realise what he’d done – the blade was so sharp that the wound that it cut in her face didn’t register immediately. The shriek she gave voice to when she felt the flap of skin cut loose from her face was barely human.

 

Ghora didn’t wait to hear it, he was already heading out the door and tapping his essence reserves to get past the Erymanthoi’s outstretched arm and then accelerate across the yard.

 

The front of the town house all but exploded as Nirvasana led her servants and the demon after him, a blaze of green fire highlighting the woman.

 

Everything was going to plan, the little sorcerer concluded. Of course, surviving this plan was going to take a worrying amount of essence. He was relatively flush after his time in the Manse, even after the two spells that he’d cast. But without delicate handling he might ignite his own anima banner and that would confuse the issue that he’d just dragged out onto the streets.

 

"I’ll kill you, you little fuck!" screamed Nirvasana.

 

Oh yes, running faster might be in order. Whatever the woman was, it was a safe bet that she’d use her own essence to catch up with him.

 

"Left-left-left!" he cried out to Nyaya as he caught up with her.

 

"Is that.... one left turn?" she asked as she obediently turned away from Temple of the Golden Lord and instead towards the upper city, with the prince's palace and the Immaculate Temple on the far side of the market district. "Or three?"

 

"Just one for now."

 

The streets were bustling and normally the approach of a raggedly dressed Djala and a woman in armour wouldn't have sufficed to create space for the pair of them to run flat-out. The blazing green anima behind them though, was sufficient persuasion that the crowds scattered at their approach. Nyaya and Ghora didn't have time to weave around those handful too slow-witted or just too slow to clear a path - it was plain from the screams behind them that Nirvasana wasn't hesitating to smash - or worse, cut - her way through them.

 

Nyaya led with her elbow, taking some solace that those she shove aside were probably not going to be left standing to obstruct Nirvasana or her sword. For his part, Ghora ducked under arms or even legs - no doubt scandalising some matrons who weren't accustomed to anyone getting under their skirts at their ages.

 

It was slowing them down though.

 

"Can you keep this up?" he asked the woman, noticing her gritted teeth and great gasps for air.

 

"I - sort of - have to," she panted.

 

The point was inarguable so he didn't argue it. Instead he gestured to the junction ahead. "Left and then right, the zig-zag might throw her off." He really hoped not, but it could buy them time.

They turned, spreading more confusion along the new street they'd entered - a relatively empty one where neither they nor Nirvasana would have to fight their way up.

Nyaya stumbled, almost falling before fighting her way upright. "Wait," she hissed. "The next street's the butchers' market - it'll be packed!"

"I thought - jewellers'?" Ghora exclaimed, leaping up onto a row of barrels and kicking the first one back and into the middle of the street where it might obstruct Nirvasana.

"That - was - right then - left," she explained.

There was a brief splintering and then a howl of renewed fury from behind them as Nirvasana bisected the barrel with her sword and found that it wasn't so effective at parrying the wine dregs within that splashed over her robes.

Then a second howl sounded, this one triumphant, and the red-furred shape of the Erymanthoi dropped from the roof-tops to block the junction into the butchers' market.

Well crap. Ghora caught hold of Nyaya's arm and abruptly used her as a pivot. The Djala made a complete circle around the woman, leaving her half-turned around and facing the oncoming lady-in-waiting and her servants while he faced the demon. "Buy me some time," he called, ignoring the inner voice that warned him that the chances were that the only way that she could was with her life.


	15. Nyaya

"Buy me some time."

Buy him some time? If Nyaya had any surefire way of buying herself some time, the first thing she'd do would be to apply her foot to the scrawny little sorcerer's backside - deathknight or not. At least she'd not have to raise whichever foot she chose to use very far to accomplish this - it wasn't that far off the ground.

Since she didn't have any such surefire way, she raised her sword and fell back on the traditional Tengese means of dealing with those of a higher social status: flattery.

"Why did you need to summon a demon to kill Mnemon Dhana?" she asked, trying to ignore the green light around the woman, or the symbol of an hourglass that glowed above her brow. Just another noble who needs to be kept happy, she lied to herself. "You're obviously quite capable of doing so yourself, your ladyship. It's not as if he was Exalted."

"Why of course I am," Nirvasana agreed with a malevolent smirk upon her now scarred features. "I could have done so even if he had been Exalted - if you can call the Dragonblooded that." She extended her blade, tapping it against Nyaya's sword and the militiawoman was dismayed to see the steel of her weapon stained as if by acid where the effervescent fumes from the brass daiklave came into contact with it.

"Then this was never about killing Mnemon Dhana!" Nyaya exclaimed as if the thought had just occurred to her. Keep gloating, she urged her opponent. And I hope whatever Ghora is doing to the demon is good, because her servants are catching up with us.

Fortunately the woman facing her was more than happy to gloat. "Oh very good, Nyaya. You obviously have a working brain behind that ugly face of yours. I could use a servant with some intelligence - why not step aside and I can find you a place in my entourage? With the sorcerer out of the way, who can dispute his guilt and your own innocence?"

Nyaya bit her lip. It was a good argument, she admitted. And how much faith could she put in Ghora anyway? He'd tried to lie to her, to trick her and to use her for his own purposes - while she still wasn't sure if he'd fully admitted what those purposes were.

"Why should l I trust you? I don’t even know what you are, much less what you want?"

"But you do know that I am not a foreigner like Ghora. I shall have my birthright and you would be a fine choice for one of my Judges, finally recognised for your talents."

"Only the Prince chooses Judges..." Nyaya's jaw dropped open. "You plan to overthrow Prince Laxhander!?"

"She plans what?"

Nyaya looked around and saw Judge Jaja and a dozen of the Militia Constables behind him, entering the street. The man's jaw dropped as he saw Nirvasana but before he could ask more, Ghora's voice- magnified by an order of magnitude, boomed out across the street - and at that volume perhaps across half of the city.

"MAGMA KRAKEN!"

A blaze of red-orange light erupted from behind Nyaya, descending towards the ground and then, like a flood of water it rushed through the mud of the street beneath her feet and towards Nirvasana who seemed frozen in a mixture of disbelief and self-condemnation.

"Impossible," she breathed.

Nyaya barely heard the word whispered before the ground erupted below Nirvasana, long tentacles unfurling from below to reach for the woman and for her servants.

Years before, while on the road to Gem, Nyaya had seen one of the fabled fire mountains that gave their name to the mountain range in which that fantastically wealthy mining city had been built. This was something like that: rock so hot that it began to flow, sheathed in black where the air cooled it but glowing the hue of fire through the cracks into the interior.

Nirvasana's three servants screamed in agony as the super-heated rock snared them, flesh burning beneath its touch. The one woman among them died quickly as the tentacle snaked around her head and neck before twisting closed with a chilling finality. Her fellow servants were less fortunate and Nyaya stumbled back as - with brutality beyond anything she'd seen, even by a demon - one tentacle rammed itself like a spear through the belly of one man and then twisted up inside his ribs, roasted organs dropping free as his chest came apart.

Nirvasana was made of sterner stuff and even the tendrils, as thick around as a man's leg, were not proof against the steaming blade she wielded. "A curse upon you!" she shrieked at Ghora, slicing apart a second tentacle, spilling the burning rock across the street. "No mortal sorcerer could cast such a spell!"

"You're in no position to throw stones about that," he told her and then he gestured almost casually towards the Eryhmanthoi - almost forgotten in the sudden drama.

One moment the demon was looming over the deathknight, massive arms about to close on him and the next it was gone. Just as in the armoury, two days before, there was no dramatic clash of wills: Ghora simply dismissed it and then spent a moment winding up the spell.

"Jaya!" called out Nirvasana, pointing desperately at Ghora. "He's Anathema! Send word to the Immaculates before he destroys us all!" She lashed out again, destroying another tentacle. The swordswoman hadn't managed to save her servants - she'd barely tried - but more than half of the rock that Ghora had called up was now spilled out on the street - and would probably be a considerable obstacle to getting wagons or even palanquins along it in the future.

The Judge looked at them both and then gestured with his spread-the-water knife for the militia to spread out around all of them. "Milady Nirvasana, your own aspect is... suspicious in that regard whereas Master Ghora is clearly Exalted by Hesiesh."

What!?

Nyaya whirled to look at Ghora more closely and realised that rather than the black shadows that had previously gathered around him when the deathknight drew on his powers, he was now surrounded by a pale tracery of flames, similar to but far less intense than those of a Fire Aspected Dragonblood.

"I'm a little unsure though," Jaja added, "Why he's previously claimed to be a mortal, given the suspicion that this has brought down upon him in the past."

"I'm Ashborn," Ghora explained in terse phrases as he finished winding up the banishment spell. "Born and exalted upon a Shadowland. That leaves a mark. And the Scarlet Dynasty frown on such matters." His eyes narrowed as he realised what the militia were trying to do. "I'd not want to tell you your business. But you'd be safer - to call for the Immaculates - than to try to restrain her yourself."

"My business was the death of Mnemon Dhana," Jaja replied cautiously. "But I can't ignore the accusation of treason on the part of Lady Nirvasana."

With a final sweeping cut of her sword, Nirvasana sliced the last tentacle lengthways. "No treason, Jaja. This is hardly the way that I had planned to announce it but it is Laxhander and his clan who are the traitors: usurpers of the throne of the Shorelands, a clan who rule over us only through their currying of our oppressors in the Realm." Her voice rose as she spoke, addressing all in earshot. "I stand before you, the last heir of the ancient line that ruled An Teng from time immemorial until we were driven into hiding by the usurpers!"

Her words, however outrageous, had the ring of conviction - of genuine fervor. They might be wrong, Nyaya would confess freely that she was no historian, but she did not doubt that Nirvasana believed what she said.  
  
"Even if what you say is true," Jaja declared uneasily, "I..."

"It is more than that!" Nirvasana produced from her sleeve the obol of Stygian jade. "For this was in the hands of Mnemon Dhana, as I have your own militia woman to testify!" She threw it to Jaja. "Token of his dealings, on behalf of his House, with the Death Lords."

Nyaya grimaced and when Jaja gave her a questioning look she reluctantly nodded confirmation. "He had it in a pocket when the Anuhle attacked," she agreed. "I saw it fall away when the demon tore his leg away."

"A demon," Ghora interjected, icily, "That Lady Nirvasana had summoned - just as she had summoned the Erymanthoi that you just watched me banish. And you will find your Constable Kanuna in the townhouse where she has made her headquarters, his head cut away by the very blade she holds."

Swords that may have been wavering a moment ago now steadied and were pointed towards Nirvasana, who shook her head. "This from a sorcerer who has just boasted of his connections to the Dead? Born in a Shadowland, he confesses. I was born here in An Teng and that should say all that needs to be said about my loyalties and his."

Jaja shook his head. "This is not a conversation to be had in the streets," he protested weakly, looking around at curious eyes peering at the confrontation from the safety of the windows, doors or around corners.

"Where better?" Nirvasana raised her sword above her head. "Who here wants to see An Teng fall into darkness under Laxhander, who crawls to the Dragonblooded even as their ambitions would plunge us all into the Underworld, An Teng's rule promised to the Silver Prince of Skullstone!?"

There were murmurs of concern from those listening, even from Jaja's militiamen but, before Nirvasana could triumphantly name herself as an alternative to such a doom, a high, carrying voice spoke from the centre of the tableau.

"How do you know that?"

All eyes went to Nyaya, who stifled a grimace as she saw a burning anger rekindle in Nirvasana's eyes and realised she was far from out of reach if the other woman decided to make a sudden lunge.

"Mnemon Dhana told us that was returning from his first meeting," she revealed, keeping one wary eye on Lady Nirvasana. "He hadn't had the chance to tell anyone else what terms were discussed, so the only ways you'd know that would be if you knew in advance, or if you learned from the other side of the negotiations. So you must have had a hand in one side or another - and I hardly know which is worse!"

"I was spying upon their meeting," snapped Nirvasana. "Although I note that Dhana seems to have taken you into his confidence - no doubt because you readily associate with a servant of the Dead yourself." She pointed her sword at Ghora. "He at least has the excuse of being a foreigner, but how can you justify your treason, Nyaya? Your sword and your armour - it all speaks of the city occupied by the dead since the reign of my ancestors: whose tomb did you raid in the City of Dead Flowers?"

Nyaya shivered as that accusation sank home. The truth would hardly exonerate her; if anything it would support Nirvasana's point all the more to reveal that the weapons were a gift from a deathknight. Alright, if this was going to be a mud-throwing contest then she'd take the arrogant woman down with her. "And what does your sword say about you? That's no natural weapon."

"It's -"

"It's Malfean brass," Ghora announced. "Demon-wrought and demon-wielded, I have no doubt. You say that you are the rightful ruler of An Teng, Lady Nirvasana."

"I am!" she shouted. "A right usurped from -"

"Just as the Unconquered Sun seized his throne from the Green Sun King, Malfeas?"

There was a deathly silence.

"You who would rule Salt-Founded Glory, the Shore-Lands and perhaps all of An Teng must answer this: who do you serve?"

To Nyaya's bewildered eyes, it seemed that everyone else - Jaja, his militia and the scores of Tengese citizens drawn to the confrontation - shrank in perspective as compared to the green-glowing Nirvasana and to Ghora, whose pale flamed anima was increasingly flickering with shadows. Two nexi of power in contention and somehow, she stood between them.

Who do you serve, Nirvasana? Yes, I want to know that.

But, she looked back at Ghora, I have the same question for you. Who does a deathknight serve? Himself or some distant master?

And most of all, who do I serve?

"To whom do you kneel?" demanded Ghora.

"I," Nirvasana begun, words wrung out of her against her will, "I - serve..."

"Say it!" Ghora did not speak alone. Nyaya's voice joined his, weakly, tentatively. A mortal speaking alongside a demi-god's. But against another demi-god, might that be what tipped the balance.

"I - bend - my knee - to..." Nirvasana forced herself to raise her sword.

"Answer," Nyaya screamed. "Answer us, in the name of the Golden Lord!"

"Malfeas!" With a gasp, the word exploded from the woman's throat. Ignoring gasps of revulsion around her, Nirvasana ceased to hold back. "I serve the Green Sun King! I have journeyed to his prison and bent my knee in fealty to he who was overthrown by the Chosen of the Unconquered Sun!"

Released by her answer from the terrible pressure that Ghora had imposed somehow upon her, Nirvasana lunged forwards.

Instinctively, Nyaya stepped into the blow, raising her own humble sword in a parry.

Before, she had seen her sword stained merely by the touch of that steaming sword. Now it grated against hers, steel screaming in protest at its violation by Malfean brass.

Nyaya felt her knee tremble under the forces. Her sword arm felt as if it might snap but somehow she forced the demon-pledged princess' weapon out of line. Blood thundering in her head, she could barely see the emerald glare of the younger woman and felt rather than saw her sword snap. Without hesitation, she opened her hand, releasing the hilt, and then let her protesting leg collapse beneath her, grasping Nirvasana's extended sword arm and forcing it down as she fell.

 

Catching herself on one knee and hand, Nyaya felt a pair of solid shapes in the sleeve beneath her hand and closed her fingers around them. There was a sudden wrench and the sleeve tore as Nirvasana yanked her arm and her sword free.

Off balance, the last thing Nyaya saw before blackness took her was the lady's knee approaching her face.


	16. Ghora

Ghora winced as he saw Nyaya tumble over backwards. A blow to her face like that could have snapped her neck, although he thought she'd managed to ride the kick just enough to avoid that. She'd have one hell of a headache on waking though, assuming that no one stabbed her first.

And since she'd stopped Nirvasana from stabbing him, he should probably return the favour. His scalpels dropped into his hands and he stepped forwards to stand over Nyaya. "Now that you've proven your right to rule by beating down a mortal woman, why don't you step up and try facing someone half your size?" he challenged her.

"What are you trying to prove with those two splinters?" Nirvasana spat.

"I'm compensating for my extremely large penis. And just one of these two was enough of a weapon for me to mark up your face with it," he reminded her.

At the gibe, the woman's face paled except around the disfigurement in question (although it had ceased to bleed almost immediately). "I'll be sure to repay you twice over," she promised and leapt towards him, slashing towards his head with the mist-spewing sword.

With no guard upon his weapons, Ghora instead crossed them like scissors to snare and block the blade. Jade and soulsteel, they proved more equal than Nyaya's steel had to the purpose of holding back the Malfean weapon.

For a moment they psuehd against each other, his face to her breasts. Nirvasana had height on her side, but Ghora's use of two hands counted in his favour. He pushed forwards, not up, shortening the distance between the two of them until - wary of letting him get close enough to bring one of his shorter weapons up and into her gut, his opponent skipped back to open up the range.

Under the pressure, however, his anima banner flared up and overpowered the spell that was masking its true colours. A variation of the one that he'd used to let Nyaya enter the city, he could have used it to make himself look utterly unlike himself but he'd decided refrain so that he'd still be recognizable as himself, if not as one of the Abyssal Exalted, in order to draw out his enemies.

That had worked better than expected, but now he'd let his own secret out.

Nirvasana's amber eyes betrayed recognition of what the shadowy chains signified. It was decidedly unfair, he felt, that she should know that he was a deathknight of sorts while he still wasn't sure what she was. He got the worrying idea, however, that she might be some kind of counter-part of himself. There had been mention in a few books in Eye and Seven Despairs' library of Terrestrial Exalted being re-shaped by Malfeas and his fellow Yozi into their agents in Creation.

"So you're an Akuma?" he asked, trying to close in again.

Nirvasana kept the distance open however, stabbing and feinting to force him back and out of reach of her. "Oh?" she laughed contemptuously. "This is rich. For all the problems your blundering around has caused me, it's a start on my revenge to know that your Master doesn't trust you with all the secrets of your kind, deathknight."

"I'm sorry to break this to you, but neither I nor his other servants ever enjoyed the full trust of my master, back when I had one," he shot back. "He wouldn't have trusted himself with his secrets if he'd been able to avoid it. It's no surprise that he was keeping things from me."

"Well if he wanted you to live in ignorance then I'll let you take that lack of comprehension to the grave," Nirvasana spat and lunged in again. Ghora went to parry but he couldn't match the essence that she used to speed her arm or the sword that it held and he cried out, involuntarily as the blade bit into his left arm, above the elbow and severed the flesh and the bone beneath it.

Whatever she is, she doesn't have the same problem that I have drawing essence from Creation, he noted and dived forwards, abandoning the jade scalpel as it slipped from the fingers of his left arm. He felt the few remaining tendons and muscles connecting the arm to him tearing as he threw himself at her feet.

Incautious in her triumph, Nirvasana wasn't prepared when he brought his elbow crashing down with every bit if his admittedly unimpressive weight upon the top of her foot. She screamed as bones broke and Ghora took advantage of her distraction to seize hold and close his jaws around the back of that ankle.

Blood and essence flowed into him from her, if only briefly before she gathered her wits and stabbed for his head with her sword. Ghora rolled aside, taking a moment to use the soulsteel to slash away what remained of his left arm. Fortunately he didn't need to cauterize the wound: a simple exercise of will closed off the veins and arteries. True healing would take time (and perhaps some surgery) but at least he wouldn't bleed to death before he had the chance to arrange that.

Distracted by her pain, Nirvasana was slower than he to rise to his feet. He needed a weapon to match her own, but he couldn't expect an equal sword to be just lying around.

Did he have time for a spell? Perhaps.

Enough essence? After draining some of hers, again perhaps.

He gambled.

'Perhaps' was better than no chance at all.

Jaja and his militia, trying to close in on what must have appeared to be two crippled combatants, backed up sharply as he started to chant.

Nirvasana reared up, scrambling into a limping run. "No you don't!" she called out, lunging towards him with the sword that still dripped with his blood.

A sword of jagged black lightning parried hers. "It would seem that I do," he replied.

Devoid of sophistication, the two of them hacked at each other. Ghora knew perfectly well that he was by no means a master of the sword, although the basics had been beaten into him in a few discreet lessons at the Stone House on the principle that it was always useful to have something to fall back upon. Fortunately Nirvasana didn't appear to be significantly - if at all - more skilled and she was drawing upon her essence to compensate for the injury to her foot. While the loss of his arm certainly didn't help, it didn't require the same measures to offset.

It seemed that the next time one of them managed to get past the other's guard that it would decide the fight. With such savage weapons, such a hit would undoubtedly maim even if it did not kill but where other combatants might have resorted to caution, Ghora and Nirvasana threw themselves at each other in vicious determination to be first to land that blow. Whichever of them slipped first would be the one of them to die.

Swords clashed against each other back and forth across the street. More than once one of the militiamen seemed about to jump in on one side or the other, but Ghora saw Jaja order them back. He was an educated man, Ghora knew, and could well guess the likely consequences for anyone who was that reckless.

For his part, Ghora could feel his lungs labouring and his limbs burning as they had not since before Eye and Seven Despairs had chosen, for his own inscrutable reasons, to recruit him. If Nirvasana didn’t slip up soon then he feared he might falter. If he had only managed to get an artifact of even the most minor kind that could accept the hearthstone that hung in a pouch around his neck. The flow of essence would have been a critical advantage.

But he had not, and though he could see sweat upon the face of his adversary, she showed no sign of uncertainty.

Which meant he might well be about to die.


	17. Nyaya

The sky was very blue, Nyaya realised as she opened her eyes, but in the direction her feet were pointed it seemed to be both as black as night or an alien and hostile green.

 

Recollection stole back to her: Nirvasana and Ghora!

 

Moving her head slightly she saw crowds had gathered, not daring to come to close but equally unable to stay away from this unparalleled spectacle. It was only a matter of time before an Immaculate Monk arrived and then…

 

Her imagination failed her, but as she clenched her fists in frustration, she could see no way in which the consequences would be good for An Teng. She boasted no understanding of what primordial beings might rule hell and the underworld but the Immaculate Order would offer no tolerance for their presence.

 

The two shapes she had seized from Nirvasana’s sleeve were still within her right hand and she raised them, curiously to examine them. It seemed beyond hope that they might help but what hope was there left but a fool’s…?

They were coins.

Identical coins of the Realm.

Both of jade that should be white but instead bore a distinctive discolour.

What had Dhana said about his counterpart representing the Silver Prince? ‘He had a token to match my own.’

And here they were, having been Nirvasana’s possession. She had stolen away with one from the attack upon Dhana… but perhaps that had not been her original plan but a modification that she made when the attack was foiled by Ghora? And how had she come to have the other. Had she hunted down and killed the agent of the Silver Prince?

It was possible, but Nyaya’s thoughts led her in another direction. ‘Of course, if Mnemon was caught with the coins, Ragara would turn on them. It seems a risk: what if someone else planted the coin to implicate Mnemon?’ She’d said that to Nirvasana herself.

"You manipulative bitch!" she snarled, clambering to her feet and flinging the two jade tokens in the direction of the green glow. "You’re the one that sent that thing to Dhana in the first place! Mnemon never gave him any orders, you set this up to discredit her and kick off a civil war between the Great Houses."

"…" Nirvasana stared at Nyaya in shock and dismay. "How did you figure that ou- AAAAAAAH!"

The last was because in her distraction, Ghora had lunged forwards and thrust his blade – where in all of Creation had he found a sword of actual black lightning? – through Nirvasana’s ribs and into her black heart.

"Interesting question," he conceded. "But I have a more pressing one: does this hurt?"

"Ye-AAARGH," she screamed as he twisted the blade.

The Djala’s face twisted into a smile. "Good." And then he yanked the blade downwards. Blood gushed out across his face, washing it once more in blood. As the hell knight slipped off his sword he brought it up and then down again, the lightning cutting free her left arm to give them matching wounds.

Nyaya looked around and saw the crowd was staring at Ghora in horror. She could understand it. One monster was dead, but the other remained and now it was facing them. Painfully, feeling every ache that the last hour had inflicted on her, she bent over and lifted the stub of her sword. "Unbridled Stallion of Oblivion."

He turned towards her, ignoring Nirvasana’s corpse – by the gods, Nyaya hoped it was a corpse. If the bitch could survive evisceration then this would be a nightmare – and lowering it. "That is my name," he agreed neutrally.

"Get the hell out of my city, Amputator."

For a moment Ghora seemed nonplussed. And then he threw his head back and laughed.

The street was silent except for his laughter at Nyaya’s audacity.

"Very well, Militiawoman. But I will have my fee." He pointed down at the tokens laid on the ground. "The coinage of Stygia is better kept out of Creation."

With a sigh at the aches that were beginning to set in, Nyaya limped over and stooped to pick up the two tokens of jade. "I’m not kidding," she whispered as she handed them over. "You'd better not come back."

"The time may come when you need my help." Then he shrugged. "But you’re right. The price would be too high."

Then, without ceremony, the Unbridled Stallion of Creation dispelled his sword and recovered his own severed arm, slinging it and Nirvasana’s over his shoulder like a sheaf of wheat as he walked away from Nyaya.


	18. Epilogue - Ghora

Sat on top of the manse – which he’d established to his satisfaction was at least twenty miles from the nearest mortal town – Ghora stretched out on the stone and enjoyed the setting sun.

 

It had taken him hours to piece his arm back together and re-attach it – a feat of surgery that he was confident no more than a handful of people in Creation and Underworld could have duplicated. Living in hiding among the Tengese, he hadn’t had the freedom to stretch himself like this. Nirvasana's arm had been a useful source of replacement muscle and bone, even if it  was a little long for him.

 

Admittedly, the number of people who could carry out such an operation on a dead body was quite high – necro-surgery was a valued profession in the Underworld. But on yourself, while alive and – for obvious reasons – using only one hand?

 

Stretching his skills like that had been a pleasant change. Enough of one that he was considering not just holing up here in the Manse or going to earth in another mortal city.

 

Granted, it would be easier to get by doing the latter with more essence on hand. He used his left hand to hold up the hearthstone, now secured in a simple amulet wrought of Stygian Jade. Granted it hung around his neck by virtue of nothing more sophisticated than a crude string woven from long grass, but that didn’t matter. What mattered was that it was his and through it he had access to enough essence to do whatever he wanted.

 

So what did he want?

 

To stay here? No. It would be too boring.

 

To melt away into the shelter of a mortal city? Also no. He wasn’t mortal and such a pretence wouldn’t last forever.

 

He’d preached a good story to Nyaya about fighting back against Oblivion, buying back one moment at a time for Creation but it had been as much – perhaps more – glib justification as anything. Still, perhaps there could be something more to that.

 

In the meantime… Nirvasana had been right. Eye and Seven Despairs hadn’t told him any more about his Exaltation then he had to. There were unanswered questions about himself and even more about Nirvasana…

 

And that was it. Decision made.

 

Ghora would find who had the answers to his questions and then get those answers out of them.

 

He was humming a merry tune when he started climbing back down the side of the manse.


	19. Epilogue - Nyaya

When Nyaya reached the foot of the stairs, it wasn’t Uncle Hadri waiting by the door with her lunch. Instead Janani held it out to her. She didn’t release it when her daughter accepted it between both hands.

"Your uncle tells me that you were as surprised as I was when the Judge named you as Constable Kanuna’s replacement," she observed.

"I was. I wouldn’t have been surprised if he had me expelled from the militia."

"Nor I. But instead you’re a woman of stature now."

"I suppose that I am." Nyaya looked at her mother, wondering where she was going with this.

Janani seemed equally at a loss and let go of the lunch. Finally, with her daughter having turned and taken two steps towards the door she added: "I understand that Constables sometimes live at the armoury, rather than with their families."

Nyaya flinched – probably more so than she had the last time she’d been flogged (now she had the authority to order those! How strange!). Mother’s throwing me out, she thought dully.

"You don’t have to though," offered Janani. "I’d… like for you to keep living here."

What? "You would?"

With a sigh, the tailor flapped her hands. "Yes. You’re stubborn, crude and vexatious but I suppose it’s my karma to have a daughter like you. Just don’t go convincing my grandchildren to follow you into all these adventures of yours!"

Nyaya was laughing as she walked out of her home.


End file.
